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If the explanation looks simple on the page, you can guess that someone took hours writing it.

Every now and then there is a straight-forward explanation of how the world works, but more often, the science is complicated and does not fit the early elementary school format. Young readers get pages of maybe 100 words. Giving them an explanation that is both interesting and accurate is hard.

Light, for instance, seems easy. We all know what light is. But explaining how light works quickly becomes complex. Why can the sunlight go through your car window and not come out again? (The answer is that it bounces off the dark seats and loses some of its energy, now the light is slightly different than stuff that came in, and the window lets in and out only pure sunlight. So now the light stays in the car, bouncing all over, losing energy on each bounce. That lost energy is transformed to heat, and your seats get too hot to sit in.) That explanation right there is 66 words, leaving little room for other uses of light.

Should we be giving these kids more explanation? Or is it enough to say the windows trap the light? And how can we make both types of books available?