Impress your friends and enemies alike with the crazy things you’ll wind up learning. Don’t let the recommended grades fool you – if you’re interested in a certain topic, you’re bound to love the book.
Aamodt, Sandra and Sam Wang. Welcome to your brain: why you lose your car keys but never forget how to drive and other puzzles of everyday life. 2008. 12th Grade
Aamodt and Wang challenge popular myths while drawing on recent findings in neuroscience to offer insight into how the human brain actually works, sharing additional information on a wide variety of topics, from the brain’s role in religious beliefs and ways of coping with jet lag to the differences between male and female brains.
Ties in with: 12th Grade Psychology, Neuroscience
Global Weirdness: severe storms, deadly heat waves, relentless drought, rising seas, and the weather of the future. 2012. 12th Grade
An accessible explanation of climate change summarizes its science while sharing insights into its implications for the future, answering key questions from the role of fossil fuels to the economic costs of reducing carbon emissions.
Ties in with: 12th Grade Environmental Science
Kean, Sam. The disappearing spoon: and other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements. 2010. 11th Grade.
In The Disappearing Spoon, Kean guides readers through the periodic table, recounting compelling, strange, charming, and humorous tales all revolving around the elements.
Ties in with: 11th Grade Chemistry, History of Science
Pierson, D.C. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To. 2010. 12th Grade.
When fifteen-year-old Darren Bennett meets Eric Lederer, there’s an instant connection. They share a love of drawing, the bottom rung on the cruel high school social ladder and a pathological fear of girls. Then Eric reveals a secret: he doesn’t sleep. Ever. When word leaks out about Eric’s condition, he and Darren find themselves on the run. Is it the government trying to tap into Eric’s mind, or something far darker? It could be that not sleeping is only part of what Eric’s capable of, and the truth is both better and worse than they could ever imagine.
Ties in with: 12th Grade English, Science
Of note: 2011 Alex Award winner