First Grade

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: Roaring Rockets sends Rabbit, Bird, and Mouse zooming to the Moon in a rhyming picture-book adventure packed with spacecraft details. Spacesuits, oxygen helmets, gravity gear, and the rocket's job become part of imagining how the friends can travel beyond Earth.

• Physics & Energy
• Engineering & Technology
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: Amazing Airplanes follows Rabbit, Bird, and Mouse as pilots, baggage handlers, and cabin crew in a rhyming trip through an airport and flight. The animal cast and wordplay carry practical aeronautics, from the cockpit and landing gear to flight safety and air-traffic coordination.

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

Why it works: How to Be a Ladybug gives Dotty the larva a garden full of predators, rival insects, confusing body changes, and wings still to come. Her comic journey lets children discover that a ladybug's early stages look and behave differently from the familiar adult.

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

Why it works: How to Be a Dragonfly follows Chase from pond-dwelling nymph to airborne adult as a grasshopper narrator coaches him through danger, growth, and daring escapes. The comic plot makes each life stage, behavior, and pond adaptation something Chase must use before readers can see what he becomes.