My Science School

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library is a children's novel by author Chris Grabenstein. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for Middle Grade novels for 111 weeks between 2013 and 2016, peaking at #8 in hardback and #2 in paperback.

Grabenstein has stated that the book contains a secret puzzle that readers can decode. To solve it, he offers some advice given by Mr. Lemoncello in the book: "Forget the Industrial Revolution, my first idea might be your best solution."

Kyle is a game fan—board games, word games, and especially video games! Kyle’s hero, the famous gamemaker Luigi Lemoncello, is the genius behind the design of the town’s new public library, which contains not only books, but an IMAX theater, an electronic learning center, instructional holograms, interactive dioramas and electromagnetic hover ladders that float patrons up to the books they want.

Lucky Kyle wins a spot as one of the first twelve kids invited to a gala, overnight library lock-in filled with of fun and games. But the next morning, when the lock-in is supposed to be over, the doors remain locked. Kyle and the others must follow book-related clues and unravel all sorts of secret puzzles to find the hidden escape route if they want to win Mr. Lemoncello’s most fabulous prize ever.

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library is more than a rib-tickling novel full of humor and suspense. It’s a game in itself, in which readers can have fun solving clues and answering riddles while learning how to navigate the Dewey Decimal system. Eagle-eyed kids—not to mention their parents, teachers, and librarians—can also hunt for the names of authors and classic books sprinkled throughout the fast-moving story.

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Markus Zusak was born in 1975 in Sydney, Australia, the youngest of four children of immigrant German and Austrian parents. Neither parent could read or write English when they first arrived in Australia, but they wanted their children to master the language and strongly encouraged them to read and communicate in English from an early age. Zusak began writing fiction at age 16 and pursued a degree in teaching. Before becoming a professional author, Zusak worked briefly as a house painter, a janitor and a high school English teacher.

The Book Thief followed in 2006 and was met with even more critical and popular success. A sympathetically drawn Death narrates the story of orphan Liesel Meminger, who finds friendship and a new family in a small town in Germany during World War II. She also discovers the power of words and books as Hitler’s Nazi agenda threatens to destroy everything she has come to love. Zusak chose the subject matter in part to share the stories his parents told him about growing up in Austria and Germany during the war. The Book Thief was published as a novel for adults in Australia and as a young adult novel in the United States, but Zusak doesn’t draw such distinctions. “What I wanted to do… was write someone’s favorite book,” rather than write for a specific audience, Zusak revealed in an interview. Author John Green reviewed the book in the New York Times, hailing it as “[b]rilliant” and “achingly sad,” and said of the heroine, “[t]he hope we see in Liesel is unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and war and violence.”

Zusak received many awards for The Book Thief, including the Michael L. Printz Honor and the Kathleen Mitchell Award (Australia). It was named a Best Book by the School Library Journal and the Young Adult Library Services Association, and was the Editors’ Choice in the Kirkus Review and Booklist. Zusak lives in Sydney, Australia and continues to write fiction.

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Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a 1726 prose satire by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre.

The book was an immediate success. The English dramatist John Gay remarked "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." In 2015, Robert McCrum released his selection list of 100 best novels of all time in which Gulliver's Travels is listed as "a satirical masterpiece".

It is uncertain exactly when Swift started writing Gulliver's Travels. (Much of the writing was done at Loughry Manor in Cookstown, County Tyrone, whilst Swift stayed there.) Some sources[which?] suggest as early as 1713 when Swift, Gay, Pope, Arbuthnot and others formed the Scriblerus Club with the aim of satirising popular literary genres. According to these accounts, Swift was charged with writing the memoirs of the club's imaginary author, Martinus Scriblerus, and also with satirising the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is known from Swift's correspondence that the composition proper began in 1720 with the mirror-themed Parts I and II written first, Part IV next in 1723 and Part III written in 1724; but amendments were made even while Swift was writing Drapier's Letters. By August 1725 the book was complete; and as Gulliver's Travels was a transparently anti-Whig satire, it is likely that Swift had the manuscript copied so that his handwriting could not be used as evidence if a prosecution should arise, as had happened in the case of some of his Irish pamphlets (the Drapier's Letters). In March 1726 Swift travelled to London to have his work published; the manuscript was secretly delivered to the publisher Benjamin Motte, who used five printing houses to speed production and avoid piracy. Motte, recognising a best-seller but fearing prosecution, cut or altered the worst offending passages (such as the descriptions of the court contests in Lilliput and the rebellion of Lindalino), added some material in defence of Queen Anne to Part II, and published it. The first edition was released in two volumes on 28 October 1726, priced at 8s. 6d.

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Where the Wild Things Are, illustrated children’s book by American writer and artist Maurice Sendak, published in 1963. The work was considered groundbreaking for its honest treatment of children’s emotions, especially anger, and it won the 1964 Caldecott Medal.

This story of 338 words focuses on a young boy named Max who, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks such havoc through his household that he is sent to bed without his supper. Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by frightening beasts, the Wild Things. After successfully intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects. However, he starts to feel lonely and decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. Upon returning to his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him.

Sendak won the annual Caldecott Medal from the children's librarians in 1964, recognizing Wild Things as the previous year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It was voted the number one picture book in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for the first time.

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How to Train Your Dragon (HTTYD) is an American media franchise from DreamWorks Animation and loosely based on the eponymous series of children's books by British author Cressida Cowell. It consists of three feature films: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019). 

The franchise follows the adventures of a young Viking named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (voiced by Jay Baruchel), son of Stoick the Vast, leader of the Viking island of Berk. Although initially dismissed as a clumsy and underweight misfit, he soon becomes renowned as a courageous expert in dragons, beginning with Toothless (Randy Thom), a member of the rare Night Fury breed as his flying mount and his closest companion. Together with his friends, he manages the village's allied dragon population in defense of his home as leader of a flying corps of dragon riders. Upon becoming leaders of their kind, Hiccup and Toothless are forced to make choices that will truly ensure peace between people and dragons. Dean DeBlois, the director of the trilogy, described its story as "Hiccup's coming of age," taking a span of five years between the first and second film, and a year between the second and third film.

The film series has been highly acclaimed, with each film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, in addition to the first film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Score.

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Charlotte's Web is a book of children's literature by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as "Some Pig") in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.

Charlotte's Web was adapted into an animated feature by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions in 1973. Paramount released a direct-to-video sequel, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, in the U.S. in 2003 (Universal released the film internationally). A live-action film version of E. B. White's original story was released in 2006. A video game based on this adaptation was also released in 2006.

Did you know that there really was a spider named 'Charlotte' who inspired E.B. White to write the story? He bought a farm in Maine, where he lived for many years and raised all kinds of animals. The spider lived in his barn and he used to spend hours just watching her, the way that Fern watched the animals in Charlotte's Web. Wilbur, the pig, was also inspired by a pig that E.B. White was raising on his farm. The barn in which Avery and Fern swing on the rope swing is also real and is still standing—and the rope swing is still there! E.B. White wrote Charlotte's Web because he loved animals and enjoyed life on his farm.

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A Wrinkle in Time, novel for young adults by Madeleine L’Engle, published in 1962. It won a Newbery Medal in 1963. Combining theology, fantasy, and science, it is the story of travel through space and time to battle a cosmic evil. With their neighbour Calvin O’Keefe, young Meg Murry and her brother Charles Wallace embark on a cosmic journey to find their lost father, a scientist studying time travel. Assisted by three eccentric women—Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which—the children travel to the planet Camazotz, where they encounter a repressed society controlled by IT, a disembodied brain that represents evil. Among the themes of the work are the dangers of unthinking conformity and scientific irresponsibility and the saving power of love. 

Upon completion in 1960, the novel was rejected by at least 26 publishers, because it was, in L'Engle's words, "too different," and "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adults' book, anyhow?"

In "A Special Message from Madeleine L'Engle" on the Random House website, L'Engle offers another possible reason for the rejections: "A Wrinkle in Time had a female protagonist in a science fiction book," which at the time was uncommon. After trying "forty-odd" publishers (L'Engle later said "twenty-six rejections"), L'Engle's agent returned the manuscript to her. Then at Christmas, L'Engle threw a tea party for her mother. One of the guests happened to know John C. Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and he insisted that L'Engle should meet with him. Although the publisher did not, at the time, publish a line of children's books, Farrar met L'Engle, liked the novel, and ultimately published it under the Ariel imprint.

The book was reissued by Square Fish in trade and mass market paperback formats in May 2007, along with the rest of the Time Quintet. This new edition includes a previously unpublished interview with L'Engle as well as a transcription of her Newbery Medal acceptance speech.

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The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature.

The story is told in the form of an episodic quest, and most chapters introduce a specific creature or type of creature of Tolkien's geography. Bilbo gains a new level of maturity, competence, and wisdom by accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey, and adventurous sides of his nature and applying his wits and common sense. The story reaches its climax in the Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict.

The publisher was encouraged by the book's critical and financial success and, therefore, requested a sequel. As Tolkien's work progressed on its successor, The Lord of the Rings, he made retrospective accommodations for it in The Hobbit. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. Further editions followed with minor emendations, including those reflecting Tolkien's changing concept of the world into which Bilbo stumbled.

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Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.

Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace (Nobel characterized the Peace Prize as "to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses"). In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) established the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.

The Nobel Prizes, beginning in 1901, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, beginning in 1969, have been awarded 603 times to 962 people and 25 organizations. Four individuals have received more than one Nobel Prize.

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Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. Following the flight, Gagarin became a cultural hero in the Soviet Union. Even today, more than six decades after the historic flight, Gagarin is widely celebrated in Russian space museums, with numerous artifacts, busts and statues displayed in his honor. His remains are buried at the Kremlin in Moscow, and part of his spacecraft is on display at the RKK Energiya museum.

More than 200 Russian Air Force fighter pilots were selected as cosmonaut candidates. Such pilots were considered optimal because they had exposure to the forces of acceleration and the ejection process, as well as experience with high-stress situations. Gagarin, a 27-year-old senior lieutenant at the time, was among the pilots selected.

On April 12, 1961, at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time, the Vostok 1 spacecraft blasted off from the Soviets' launch site. Because no one was certain how weightlessness would affect a pilot, the spherical capsule had little in the way of onboard controls; the work was done either automatically or from the ground. If an emergency arose, Gagarin was supposed to receive an override code that would allow him to take manual control, but Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program, disregarded protocol and gave the code to the pilot prior to the flight.

Over the course of 108 minutes, Vostok 1 traveled around the Earth once, reaching a maximum height of 203 miles (327 kilometers). The spacecraft carried 10 days' worth of provisions in case the engines failed and Gagarin was required to wait for the orbit to naturally decay. But the supplies were unnecessary. Gagarin re-entered Earth's atmosphere, managing to maintain consciousness as he experienced forces up to eight times the pull of gravity during his descent.

Vostok 1 had no engines to slow its re-entry and no way to land safely. About 4 miles (7 km) up, Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth. In order for the mission to be counted as an official spaceflight, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the governing body for aerospace records, had determined that the pilot must land with the spacecraft. Soviet leaders indicated that Gagarin had touched down with the Vostok 1, and they did not reveal that he had ejected until 1971. Regardless, Gagarin still set the record as the first person to leave Earth's orbit and travel into space.

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On June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to travel into space. After 48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date.

In 1963, Tereshkova was chosen to take part in the second dual flight in the Vostok program, involving spacecrafts Vostok 5 and Vostok 6. On June 14, 1963, Vostok 5 was launched into space with cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky aboard. With Bykovsky still orbiting the earth, Tereshkova was launched into space on June 16 aboard Vostok 6. The two spacecrafts had different orbits but at one point came within three miles of each other, allowing the two cosmonauts to exchange brief communications. Tereshkova’s spacecraft was guided by an automatic control system, and she never took manual control. On June 19, after just under three days in space, Vostok 6 reentered the atmosphere, and Tereshkova successfully parachuted to earth after ejecting at 20,000 feet. Bykovsky and Vostok 5 landed safely a few hours later.

After her historic space flight, Valentina Tereshkova received the Order of Lenin and Hero of the Soviet Union awards. In November 1963, she married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, reportedly under pressure from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who saw a propaganda advantage in the pairing of the two single cosmonauts. The couple made several goodwill trips abroad, had a daughter, and later separated. In 1966, Tereshkova became a member of the Supreme Soviet, the USSR’s national parliament, and she served as the Soviet representative to numerous international women’s organizations and events. She never entered space again, and hers was the last space flight by a female cosmonaut until the 1980s.

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Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin formed the American crew that landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC (14:17 CST). Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours and 39 minutes later on July 21 at 02:56 UTC; Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Command module pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moon's surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the lunar surface, at a site they had named Tranquility Base upon landing, before lifting off to rejoin Columbia in lunar orbit.

After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V's third stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and traveled for three days until they entered lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20. The astronauts used Eagle's ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that propelled Columbia out of the last of its 30 lunar orbits onto a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space.

Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described the event as "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Apollo 11 effectively proved US victory in the Space Race to demonstrate spaceflight superiority, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.

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G. N. Lewis was born in 1875 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. After receiving his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University and studying abroad in Germany and the Philippines, Lewis moved to California in 1912 to teach chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became the Dean of the College of Chemistry and spent the rest of his life. As a professor, he incorporated thermodynamic principles into the chemistry curriculum and reformed chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists. He began measuring the free energy values related to several chemical processes, both organic and inorganic. In 1916, he also proposed his theory of bonding and added information about electrons in the periodic table of the chemical elements. In 1933, he started his research on isotope separation. Lewis worked with hydrogen and managed to purify a sample of heavy water. He then came up with his theory of acids and bases, and did work in photochemistry during the last years of his life.

Though he was nominated 41 times, G. N. Lewis never won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, resulting in a major Nobel Prize controversy. On the other hand, Lewis mentored and influenced numerous Nobel laureates at Berkeley including Harold Urey (1934 Nobel Prize), William F. Giauque (1949 Nobel Prize), Glenn T. Seaborg (1951 Nobel Prize), Willard Libby (1960 Nobel Prize), Melvin Calvin (1961 Nobel Prize) and so on, turning Berkeley into one of the world's most prestigious centers for chemistry. On March 23, 1946, Lewis was found dead in his Berkeley laboratory where he had been working with hydrogen cyanide; many postulated that the cause of his death was suicide. After Lewis' death, his children followed their father's career in chemistry, and the Lewis Hall on the Berkeley campus is named after him.

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Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist whose concept of electron pairs led to modern theories of chemical bonding.

Gilbert N. Lewis was born at Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1875. He received his bachelor's degree in 1896 and his doctorate in 1899 from Harvard University. He served as chemistry instructor at Harvard until 1900. In 1912 he was appointed permanent dean of the college of chemistry and chair of the department of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained until his death.

In 1916, Lewis published his famous paper "The Atom and the Molecule," in which he formulated the idea of the covalent bond, a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms. He also defined the term odd molecule (free radical) when an electron is not shared. Shortly after this, Lewis became involved with military research. In 1923, he published Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules. In 1938, he put forth the idea of electronic theory of acids and bases, in which acids were classified more generally as electron pair acceptors, and bases as electron-pair donors.

Lewis successfully contributed to chemical thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope separation.

Though he was nominated 41 times, G. N. Lewis never won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, resulting in a major Nobel Prize controversy.

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He along with a large number of fellow candidates went through many tests first at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bangalore and then to Moscow. The large batch was gradually reduced to a shortlist of four candidates, before a final round of medical tests left just two candidates – Rakesh Sharma and Ravish Malhotra – both of them being IAF pilots. It was made clear at the outset that even though only one of them would finally make the grade for the space odyssey, the other one would be a standby for any eventuality. However, the identity of who exactly would be the lucky one would be taken only towards the last stage before the actual space flight.

AS part of the rigorous training they underwent for nearly two years at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City in the outskirts of Moscow, the duo of Sharma and Malhotra were even locked inside a closed room at an IAF facility in Bangalore for 72 hours to detect if they suffered from claustrophobia. Sharma performed yoga for 10 minutes daily to maintain better fitness in space, as well as zero gravity yoga to combat space sickness. On April 2, 1984, Sharma become the first Indian to go into space when he flew aboard the Soviet rocket Soyuz T-11 that was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The rocket docked and transferred the three member Soviet-Indian international crew which included the spaceship commander Yury Malyshev and flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov, to the Salyut 7 Orbital Station. Over the years, he rose up the ranks and, in 1984, was appointed squadron leader in the IAF. He retired as wing commander and, in 1987, joined the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) wherein he was the chief test pilot at the HAL Nashik and Bangalore divisions, respectively, until 1992. He was also associated with the project involving the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas.

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