“Mind-expanding and hilarious! I got smarter reading this!”—Jeff Kinney, author of the international bestselling series Diary of a Wimpy Kid Earth sciences meet Diary of a Wimpy Kid in Oliver’s Great Big Volcanoes Are Hot!, second in an original illustrated middle-grade fiction series that blends science with narrative from bestselling author-artist Jorge Cham, the Emmy Award–nominated creator of PBS’s Elinor Wonders Why After writing his first book, eleven-year-old Oliver is kind of a celebrity around school—no big deal. But when he gets caught in a cafeteria catastrophe, he quickly goes from being the “funny science kid” to one of the “Epic Barf Kids”, the result of too much explosive cherry pie in the lunchroom. Oliver is desperate to restore his reputation—and winning the science fair sounds like the perfect way for everyone to forget about the whole barf thing. There’s just one obstacle standing in his Ana Lía Quintero, who wins the science fair every year. Luckily, Oliver has the help of his geoscientist aunt, even though she’s a little, um, quirky (scratch really quirky). If Oliver has any chance of defeating his archnemesis, he’ll have to learn all about volcanic burping and bacteria farts, how Earth’s layers are basically like boba tea, and how school cliques and the solar system have a lot in common. With laugh-out-loud humor and cartoon-style illustrations from bestselling writer and the creator of PHD Comics Jorge Cham, Oliver’s Great Big Universe is a STEAM-themed, diary-style series following one kid who’s taking on the whole universe—if he can survive middle school first. Oliver’s Great Big Universe ’s Great Big Universe (#1)Oliver’s Great Big Volcanoes Are Hot! (#2)
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.
