This Book Bubbles Over

This book really pops, full as it is of fascinating bubbles—useful and entertaining, noisy and silencing, lifesaving and dangerous, microscopic and bigger than a sports stadium.

What is a bubble? A puff of air, a swirl of gas, temporarily trapped in something else. Perhaps just moments away from popping and disappearing forever.

A bubble might look flimsy and insubstantial. But there’s more to it than that.

A bubble can. . .
Last a long time, like the bubble wrap that cushions packages
Or pop right away, like a soap bubble

It can be inside. . .
A liquid, like boiling water
Or a solid, like a loaf of bread

A bubble can be. . .
Lifesaving, like firefighting foam
Or dangerous, like the bubble nets whales form to capture fish

Delve into bubbles in this follow-up from the team behind This Book Is Full of Holes. Filled with fascinating and unusual examples from diverse STEM fields—including physics, biology, geology, food science, and medicine—this book bubbles over with fun facts about our world.

Back matter includes an author's note about the research process, language arts connections, and information about how surface tension makes fun soap bubbles possible.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionThis niche offering makes a solid addition for STEM collections.
—Booklist

Put this one in the hands of information hounds and science-report writers, along with report-assigning teachers.
—School Library Journal

Pop science at its most effervescent.
—Kirkus ReviewsNora Nickum leads conservation policy work for the Seattle Aquarium and writes articles and books for children about STEM and nature topics, including Superpod: Saving the Endangered Orcas of the Pacific Northwest and This Book Is Full of Holes: From Underground to Outer Space and Everywhere In Between, which was also illustrated by Robert Meganck. Nora lives with her family on an island in Washington state, where she enjoys spotting the tiny bubbly hideouts that spittlebugs make on plant stems.

Robert Meganck is the illustrator of several award-winning nonfiction middle grade and picture books and professor emeritus of communication arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a BFA from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He has received more than three hundred regional, national, and international awards for his illustration and graphic design work. He’s old enough to remember when a piece of bubble gum cost one penny. It was large enough to share with a friend and came with a mini comic page.