Eighth Grade

• Physics & Energy
• Engineering & Technology
• Mystery / Investigation

Why it works: Bomb follows the discovery of uranium fission through espionage, sabotage, and the secret work at Los Alamos as one continuous historical thriller. Readers need the physics and engineering problem to understand what the competing teams are racing to accomplish.

• General / Multiple Sciences
• Mystery / Investigation

Why it works: This Loch Ness Monster investigation recruits the reader as a detective evaluating famous sightings, photographs, firsthand accounts, expeditions, and videos. The unresolved monster claim gives scientific method and source criticism a concrete mystery in which the quality of evidence matters more than the most exciting story.

• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: The six-game Kasparov versus Deep Blue match gives a human champion and an IBM computing team a visible contest with uncertain stakes. Graphic suspense turns computing, programmed search, and questions about artificial intelligence into the machinery of a true sports-style showdown.

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Biography / Memoir

Why it works: NASA's spaceflight calculations are carried by the lives and barriers of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden. The mathematics and engineering matter because missions and careers depend on them.

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Expedition / Survival

Why it works: New Horizons has a destination, a nine-and-a-half-year journey, strict engineering limits, and a once-only encounter with Pluto. Following the team as they build the spacecraft and interpret its images turns planetary geology and remote exploration into the unfolding discoveries of a mission.

• General / Multiple Sciences
• Expedition / Survival

Why it works: In the Field with National Geographic tells the organization's 135-year story through the explorers, scientists, educators, photographers, and innovations that carried questions from Everest to microscopes, deep seas, and space. The changing people and tools make multidisciplinary discovery an expedition history rather than an encyclopedia of subjects.

• Earth Science
• Life Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Dinosaurs follows a century and a half of fossil hunters as discoveries repeatedly change the dinosaurs people draw and describe. The history becomes an evidence mystery in which feathers, bones, field finds, and competing interpretations revise the scientific picture.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Sharks dives from hammerheads and great whites to nurse sharks and the extinct megalodon while challenging the monster image people give them. Four hundred million years of adaptations, varied habitats, and predator roles turn fear into a visual investigation of shark diversity and ecological importance.

• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Robots and Drones gives Pouli, an early mechanical bird, a funny journey from tea-serving automata to factory robots, flying drones, and Mars rovers. His travels reveal how robots sense, follow instructions, move, and change when people design them for different jobs.

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Human Spaceflight turns the race between the United States and Soviet Union into a visual history that moves from first orbit and Moon landing to international work in an orbital laboratory. Rockets, orbital speed, microgravity, and daily-life design problems explain both the rivalry's milestones and the later cooperation.

• Life Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Dogs sends a friendly mutt after his lost ball while he investigates dogs' wolf ancestry, breed differences, and intelligence. His personal quest gives genetics, evolution, and behavior a comic character arc from predator origins to human companion.

• Astronomy & Space
• Earth Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Solar System sends Sara, Jill, and their space-faring pets on a quest past Venus, Saturn, the Sun, and other neighbors. Acid clouds, icy rings, giant storms, and the solar system's dusty origin turn each stop into a distinct planetary environment rather than a decorative backdrop.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Cats ranges from the tiny kodkod to the tiger and neighborhood cat to investigate what the feline family shares. Teeth, claws, camouflage, habitat, and domestication carry the visual journey from wild predator to human companion.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Deep-Sea Creatures descends among giant isopods, colossal squid, lampreys, and anglerfish as if readers were exploring the abyss beside them. Each dramatic creature makes sense only through the linked constraints of darkness, scarce food, and crushing water pressure.

• Life Science
• Earth Science
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Science Comics: Prehistoric Mammals travels from dinosaur-era survivors into jungles, oceans, deserts, and the Ice Age to ask how mammals spread into so many roles. Climate shifts and changing habitats drive the appearance of hooves, claws, tusks, large brains, and blowholes across the visual history.