Melissa Stewart
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Inside Lightning

Inside Lightning

by Melis­sa Stewart

Ster­ling, 2011

for ages 9–12

ISBN 978–1‑40278–949‑6

Pur­chase this book at your local inde­pen­dent book­seller or Amazon.com.

Bright. Beau­ti­ful. Dra­mat­ic. Dan­ger­ous. Light­ning is all these things — and more. Inside Light­ning reveals the truth about this mys­te­ri­ous force of nature. Find out where and when light­ning strikes, fol­low its for­ma­tion from cloud to ground, see incred­i­ble pho­tos of light­ning flash­es on Earth and beyond, and watch light­ning sci­en­tists at work. Ten spec­tac­u­lar gate­folds, plus incred­i­ble pho­tos, graphs, maps, dia­grams, and first-per­son sto­ries, take intre­pid young explor­ers right to the source light­ning’s awe­some power.

Reviews

“Clear prose and strik­ing visu­als com­bine to explain the nat­ur­al occur­rences and their effects. The books are cau­tion­ary with­out being hys­ter­i­cal, con­vey­ing imme­di­a­cy through a con­ver­sa­tion­al style and occa­sion­al per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions. Fold­out pages (some hor­i­zon­tal, some ver­ti­cal) are used to excel­lent effect. Pho­tos, draw­ings, charts, and oth­er visu­als are well cho­sen and well doc­u­ment­ed.” (The Horn Book)

  “Fea­tur­ing a step-by-step, illus­trat­ed expla­na­tion of light­ning for­ma­tion as well as com­ments from peo­ple who have had close encoun­ters with the phe­nom­e­non, Inside Light­ning pro­vides a vivid and unusu­al­ly infor­ma­tive intro­duc­tion to the sub­ject. The bib­li­og­ra­phy includes per­son­al inter­views. Excel­lent for brows­ing or sci­ence reports.” (Book­list, starred review)

Fea­tur­ing 10 fold­out pages and a trove of full-col­or pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions, these titles make study­ing sci­ence an engag­ing expe­ri­ence. Excel­lent writ­ing dis­cuss­es sci­ence basics, caus­es, his­to­ry, and tools used by sci­en­tists and researchers. Light­ning traces ancient beliefs, Ben­jamin Franklin’s kite, and mod­ern the­o­ries of what caus­es light­ning to form, kinds of light­ning, and how thun­der­heads build. The selec­tion of pho­tographs in reflects age-appro­pri­ate choic­es. Images of dam­aged build­ings, debris, and wreck­age cap­ture the destruc­tive pow­er of nature with­out show­ing peo­ple in dis­tress, injured, or oth­er casu­al­ties. Side­bars pro­vide per­ti­nent quick facts as “News­flash,” or per­son­al eye­wit­ness accounts under “I was there” or “We were there.” With fab­u­lous pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions along­side the wealth of fas­ci­nat­ing facts and infor­ma­tion, these books should be in high demand. (School Library Jour­nal)

Behind the Book

“This is the first time I’ve writ­ten a book about light­ning, so I learned a lot dur­ing the research process. I real­ly appre­ci­ate all the help sci­en­tists gave me in under­stand­ing the most up-to-date find­ings. I also enjoyed inter­view­ing a vari­ety of peo­ple who had expe­ri­enced light­ning strikes up close and per­son­al for the I Was There fea­tures in the book. But my favorite part of the project was work­ing with my edi­tor to cre­ate the dynam­ic hor­i­zon­tal gate­folds that tru­ly take you Inside Light­ning.”

Series at a Glance

You’ll also enjoy …

The Inside

Inside Earthquakes
Inside Lightning
Inside Volcanoes
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Inside Lightning

by Melis­sa Stewart

Ster­ling, 2011

for ages 9–12

ISBN 978–1‑40278–949‑6

Pur­chase this book at your local inde­pen­dent book­seller or Amazon.com.