By Lerner Publications Editorial Director Ashley Kuehl

Have you seen our new upper elementary brand? It’s called Alternator Books, we just launched it this month, and it is super cool. Fascinating information merges with cool design and gripping imagery to create excellent high-interest nonfiction books that will fly off the shelves. Well, fly into young readers’ hands and backpacks, in case you thought I meant that the books literally had flight capabilities. They don’t. But they are still awesome.

Four New Series

Cutting-Edge Robotics

Does your school have a robotics club? The Cutting-Edge Robotics series is perfect for anyone looking for background on the hot new tech in the world of robotics. We editors were pretty amazed (and sometimes unnerved!) by what the latest robots can do.

Key Questions of Physical Science

What keeps the moon from floating into space? Why do you speed up when you’re biking down a hill? Key Questions of Physical Science explores this branch of science from an investigative perspective. Learn what questions scientists asked and the ways they tested their hypotheses to come up the scientific concepts and understandings we hold as truth today.

Pro Sports Stats

Jam-packed with stats, the Pro Sports Stats series is the school library’s answer to almanacs and other collections of sports statistics! In short, readable paragraphs, these books explain what each set of stats means, where it comes from, and why it matters to the sport. And each page of main text contains a statistics chart or table–from most home runs by a player in a season to the top World Cup scorers in soccer history.

Ancient Mysteries

Stonehenge is a group of 40-ton rocks in a field in southwest England. But why is it even there? Who built it? And how did they possibly move and shape those huge rocks before modern technology? Each book in the Ancient Mysteries series explores the questions surrounding a famous ancient mystery, from Pompeii to the Egyptian Pyramids.

Learn More

Alternator Books are 32 pages, with a reading level of grades 4-5 and an interest level of grades 3-6.

They cover a variety of high-interest nonfiction topic areas, and they hit key curriculum while also being exciting enough for pleasure reading. Each title includes standard nonfiction text features for an upper elementary audience, such as a glossary, index, and sidebars, as well as some maps and diagrams.

Let us know what you think! We’ll be doing lots more in this brand in future seasons, so we’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered.