NC SciFest - April Sweetbean Bonus - Adult and Teen

Celebrate the NC Science Festival with April's Sweetbean Reading Challenge! Read about science all month long with fun books, cool facts, and exciting discoveries. Let’s read, learn, and discover the wonders of science together!

Updated March 27, 2025
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"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" : adventures of a curious character
Feynman, Richard P.
Paper Book
One of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that "buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist" (Science Digest). Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous...
American murderer : the parasite that haunted the South
Jarrow, Gail
Paper Book
Included on NPR's 2022 "Books We Love" List Finalist, 2023 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction ALSC Notable Children's Book What made workers in the American South so tired and feeble during the 19th and early 20th centuries? This exciting medical mystery uncovers...
Biology's beginnings
Hakim, Joy
Paper Book
Trace the history of life science in the first of a four-part MITeen series by mega-best-selling author Joy Hakim, who brought us The History of US. When did we start learning the scientific secrets of life? Step back to the Islamic Golden Age, when scholars ask questions...
Bomb : the race to build and steal the world's most dangerous weapon
Sheinkin, Steve.
Paper Book
Perfect for middle grade readers and history enthusiasts, New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin presents the fascinating and frightening true story of the creation behind the most destructive force that birthed the arms race and the Cold War in Bomb: The Race...
A city on Mars : can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?
Weinersmith, Kelly
Paper Book
* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the Hugo Award * Scientific American's #1 Book for 2023 * Winner of Royal Society's Trivedi Prize * A Guardian Best Book of 2024 * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Times Best Science and...
The disappearing spoon and other true tales of madness, love and the history of the world from the Periodic Table of the elements
Kean, Sam.
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie...
Eve : how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution
Bohannon, Cat
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST * THE REAL ORIGIN OF OUR SPECIES: a myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution...
The history of the computer : people, inventions, and technology that changed our world
Ignotofsky, Rachel
Paper Book
A MATHICAL HONOR BOOK . A strikingly illustrated overview of the computing machines that have changed our world-from the abacus to the smartphone-and the people who made them, by the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of Women in Science. "A...
An immense world : how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us
Yong, Ed
Paper Book
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension-the...
In the shadow of the moon : America, Russia, and the hidden history of the space race
Cherrix, Amy E.
Paper Book
An exhilarating dive into the secret history of humankind's race to the moon, from acclaimed author Amy Cherrix. This fascinating and immersive read is perfect for fans of Steve Sheinkin's Bomb and M. T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead. You've heard of the space race, but do...
The man who mistook his wife for a hat : and other clinical tales
Sacks, Oliver W.
Paper Book
In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife...
The monster's bones : the discovery of T. Rex and how it shook our world
Randall, David K.
Paper Book
In the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge with a mission to fill the empty halls of New York's struggling American Museum of Natural History: Henry Fairfield Osborn, a privileged socialite whose reputation rests on the museum's success, and intrepid Kansas-born...
Napoleon's buttons : 17 molecules that changed history
Le Couteur, Penny
Paper Book
Napoleon's Buttons is the fascinating account of seventeen groups of molecules that have greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for early exploration, and made possible the voyages of discovery that ensued. The molecules resulted in grand feats of...
A quantum life : my unlikely journey from the street to the stars
Oluseyi, Hakeem M.
Paper Book
Renowned American astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi (born James Plummer) pens a gripping, gritty coming-of-age memoir, from young boy to graduate-school student, that will resonate with teenagers, especially those of color, who are facing many choices and obstacles as they navigate their young adult...
A short history of nearly everything
Bryson, Bill.
Paper Book
One of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journey--into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill...
Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers
Roach, Mary.
Paper Book
"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."--Entertainment Weekly Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years,...
The story of more : how we got to climate change and where to go from here
Jahren, Hope
Paper Book
The essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. * "Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet?" --Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction...
What if? : serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions
Munroe, Randall
Paper Book
From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask. Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology,...
Why we die : the new science of aging and the quest for immortality
Ramakrishnan, Venki
Paper Book
"Utterly fascinating." --Bill Bryson "An incredible journey." --Siddhartha Mukherjee *WINNER OF THE 2025 ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS PROSE AWARD FOR BEST BOOK ON BIOLOGY* A groundbreaking exploration of the science of longevity and mortality--from Nobel Prize-winning...
Women in science : 50 fearless pioneers who changed the world
Ignotofsky, Rachel
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER .This "wittily illustrated and accessible volume" (The Wall Street Journal)highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from the ancient to the modern world. ...

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