I'm 72. Here Are 6 Reasons This Comic Book Is the Only Gift My Grandson Has Actually Read
An honest review from a grandfather who's given a lot of gifts that ended up in the closet... and one that didn't.
Over 13,125+ 5-Star Reviews
1. IT'S A COMIC BOOK — SO MY GRANDSON DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE HE'S LEARNING REAL CHEMISTRY
I'll be honest. When I first saw it, I thought it was just a comic. Bright colors, cartoon characters, the works. I almost didn't buy it.
Then I watched him read it.
He thinks he's reading a comic. What he's actually reading is how atoms work. Why things burn. What the periodic table is for. The same things I slogged through in a dull gray textbook at his age except he's laughing while he does it.
That's the whole trick of it. Nobody ever sat him down and said "now we're going to learn chemistry." He just opened a comic. By the time he realized it was teaching him something, he already cared.
"I DIDN'T REALIZE HE WAS LEARNING UNTIL HE EXPLAINED IT TO ME"
2. IT'S THE FIRST THING THAT GOT HIM OFF THAT TABLET WITHOUT A SINGLE ARGUMENT
Every visit, it's the same fight. The tablet. His parents fight it, I fight it, and the tablet usually wins.
I didn't buy this book expecting to change that. I figured it might sit on a shelf looking nice.
The afternoon it arrived, he read it for an hour. On the floor. Tablet face-down next to him, forgotten. Nobody told him to put it away, he just did. Because for once there was something more interesting in his hands.
I've tried bribing him off that screen. I've tried taking it away. Turns out the only thing that ever worked was handing him something better.
"HE CHOSE IT OVER THE TABLET AND I DIDN'T ASK HIM TO"
3. HE ASKED ME TO SIT DOWN AND READ IT WITH HIM.. HE HASN'T ASKED ME FOR ANYTHING LIKE THAT IN YEARS
This is the part that got me.
A few pages in, he climbed up next to me and asked if I'd read it with him. Not the TV. Not the tablet. Me.
We sat there the better part of an hour. He'd ask a question, I'd try to answer, and half the time the book had already explained it better than I could. We laughed at the cartoons. He explained the parts he'd already read like he was the teacher and I was the slow one.
I've bought that boy a hundred toys over the years. Not one of them ever got me an hour on the couch with him. This one did.
"MY HUSBAND AND HER READ IT TOGETHER EVERY NIGHT NOW
4. I'M 72 YEARS OLD AND I FOUND MYSELF READING IT AFTER HE WENT TO BED
I'll admit something. After he fell asleep, I picked it back up and finished it myself.
I grew up being told science was hard. Memorize this, memorize that, and don't ask why. I spent most of school convinced I just wasn't a "science person."
Reading this book, I finally understood things I'd been quietly confused about for seventy years. Why ice floats. What's actually happening when metal rusts. Explained so plainly I almost laughed at how simple it turned out to be.
If someone had handed me this when I was eight, I think a few things might've gone differently. That's not a small thing to say about a children's book. But I mean it.
"I LEARNED THINGS READING IT TO MY KIDS"
5. I EXPECTED WATERED-DOWN NONSENSE — IT'S REAL CHEMISTRY, REAL ELEMENTS, REAL REACTIONS
Most "kids' science" books I've seen are mostly pictures and not much underneath. Fluff. A handful of fun facts and a lot of empty space.
This isn't that.
It's the actual periodic table. Real elements. Real reactions, explained properly, just in a way an eight-year-old can follow. The comic is the wrapping. The chemistry underneath is the real thing.
I checked, mind you. I'm the suspicious type. Every "fun fact" in there holds up. They didn't dumb it down, they just worked out how to explain it without making a child feel stupid.
That's harder than it sounds. And it's the whole reason it works.
"HER TEACHER ASKED IF WE'D HIRED A TUTOR"
6. IN FIFTY YEARS OF BUYING GIFTS, THIS IS THE EASIEST ONE I'VE EVER GIVEN
I'm not good at gifts. Ask anyone in my family. I've handed over more gift cards than I'd care to admit, because I never quite know what a child actually wants.
This one I didn't have to think about.
It's rated 4.9 out of 5 by over thirteen thousand people, so I wasn't taking much of a gamble. And the bundle is the part I'd tell any grandparent about. Order two and they include The Magic Physics Lab free, which quietly takes care of the next birthday before it arrives. Order three and you've covered the cousins too.
I bought two. One for him, one waiting in the closet for his sister. Best money I've spent on either of them in years.
If you've got a curious child in your life — or one you'd like to make curious — this is the one to get. The window for this sort of thing doesn't stay open forever. I'm just glad I caught his while it was.