Looks like a book, smells like a book . . .

Let’s talk about some books that don’t look like books – at least not like the books they really are. These are stealth books.

Flip through

It has comic-like drawing, none of the dark stuff that infuses graphic novels. But once you get into it, you see it’s a genius way to to teach science.

Maybe your school had budget cutbacks. Even back in the Seventies, we had those. My chemistry class was taught by a math teacher, because we couldn’t afford a chemistry guy. And in college, I was one of those students who attended only enough classes to pass the course. Another missed opportunity.

So those of us who are science-deficient for one reason or another need the comic book approach.

In The Stuff of Life, writer Mark Schultz and illustrators Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon (amazingly, not related) take us through all of that stuff we should know … the stuff we wish we knew.

Back in high school, that was always the rap on science and math. “I’m never going to use this,” kids used to say.  That was before they made the great discovery that there’s tremendous pleasure in just knowing.

What Schultz cooked up to make this so interesting is an alien called Bloort 183. He’s been sent to Earth to research its genetic history and report back to the home planet.

This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2009.