Break Down!

Ages 8 to 12, Grades 3 to 7

Catalog Copy: Boom! Crash! Crumble! A wrecking ball smashes into the side of a building, sending pieces flying. It’s an awe-inspiring sight. It’s also science!

This book explores how things break down, crack, explode, crumple, and shatter. This fun, unique take on a how-things-work book explores the world through the lens of what it takes for things to, well, not work. In these vibrantly illustrated pages, you’ll peer through the smoke and rubble of controlled demolitions to discover the properties of building materials. Then get a glimpse of the inner workings of a cracked cell phone screen, peek carefully at mega-avalanches and sinkholes, and hold on tight as wrecking balls swing and car crushers crunch metal. Buckle up with crash-test dummies and travel back in time to explore the world’s most famous failures (looking at you, Leaning Tower of Pisa).

Featuring hands-on activities that walk kids through their own experiments in destruction, Break Down! will change the way you look at the world.

Topics include:

* Demolition and controlled destruction

* Things that are built to break

* History’s famous failures

* Natural disasters

* And more!

Complete the collection with these other National Geographic Kids Titles:

How Things Work

How Things Work: Inside Out

How Things Work: Then and Now

Check out the How Things Work video series on the National Geographic Kids YouTube channel.

About the Author

Author Bio: MARA GRUNBAUM is an award-winning science journalist, editor, and author based in Seattle, Washington. She uses humor, accessible writing, and solid science to inform audiences of all ages and interests. Grunbaum has covered all areas of science but has a particular penchant for the strange, slimy, and generally biological. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Slate, Popular Science, Live Science, Discover, Scholastic Science World, and the New York Times for Kids. She is also a senior editor for Natural History magazine and the former editor of Scholastic SuperScience, a classroom science magazine for students in grades 3 to 6. Grunbaum won the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for Children’s Science News and has a master’s degree in science, health, and environmental reporting from New York University. You can find her online at https://www.maragrunbaum.com/ or on Twitter @maragrunbaum.