Cosmos meets Diary of a Wimpy Kid in Oliver’s Great Big Universe, an original illustrated middle-grade fiction series that blends science with narrative from the Emmy Award–nominated creator of PBS’s Elinor Wonders Why . I know what you’re thinking. What makes an average 11-year-old kid qualified to tell you anything about the universe? Am I famous scientist? No. Am I a super-genius at everything? Not really. Oliver has a lot going on starting his first year of middle school—new friends, new classes, new everything. But at least there’s one thing that still makes science! Determined to be an astrophysicist one day, Oliver explains everything he learns—like how the sun burps, how ghost particles fly through you, the uncanny similarities between Mercury and cafeteria meatballs, and most important, how the Big Bang is basically just like a fart in the school hallway. (Also, there are time-bending black holes, exploding supernova stars, and aliens! Well, there could be aliens.) Oliver finally feels like he’s starting to figure things out . . . but can he stay out of the principal’s office or catch a break from his annoying sister? With laugh-out-loud humor and cartoon-style illustrations from the bestselling writer and creator of PHD Comics, Jorge Cham, Oliver’s Great Big Universe is a STEAM-themed, diary-style series following an 11-year-old who’s taking on the whole universe—if he can survive middle school first.
Author
Jorge Cham is a Chinese-Panamanian post-doc best known for his popular newspaper and web comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD Comics). He first started drawing PhD Comics as a graduate student at Stanford University, and has since been syndicated in several university newspapers and in three published book collections. Jorge Cham received his Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech in 1997, and earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford. He subsequently worked at Caltech as an instructor and as a researcher on neural prosthetics. In 2005, Cham began an invited speaking tour of over 80 major universities delivering his talk titled "The Power of Procrastination". In this lecture, Cham talks about his experiences creating the comic strip and examines the sources of grad students' anxieties. He also explores the guilt and the myths associated with procrastination and argues that in many cases it is actually a good thing.
