Alien in My Pocket #2: The Science UnFair

My son absolutely loves the "Alien in My Pocket" series, which has been a great primer to get him excited about reading. Nate does a great job capturing the interest and adventures that make any elementary school student excited to keep reading to find out what happens next. Each of the books are a 110-130 pages, so perfect for a short read and a couple chapters a night with get you through the week. I really like his main characters Zach and Oliva, as they are good friends and there to support each other, no matter how wacky of a situation they get into with the 4" tall blue alien Amp. You will want to have all 8 books, as we couldn't stop reading them. Hoping he will come out with another series, as he has a great story telling ability with a fun way of presenting STEM content and an exciting science experiment in the back of every book. Nieces and nephews will be getting these books this next year!

purchased these for a 1st grade reader. plot is easy to follow and he loves the books. This makes it a good buy for the weekly chapter book assignments.

We do read a lot via our Kindles but this book had such a nice cover that it was fun to have the paperback version. My 9 year old often doesn't take time to read an entire book but once he started the first book, Alien in My Pocket, he was hooked and couldn't wait to read this book. I had to tell him to put it away at the dinner table. These books are a nice change from the same-old chapter books that seem to be out there.

My daughter and her entire 3rd grade class LOVE this entire series. I ordered all 3 books, and I'm glad I did. My daughter even gave one of the books as a gift in her class book exchange, and the girl who received it squealed with excitement when she saw it!

Nate, a graduate of MIT, champion pole vaulter, and entrepreneur possesses a wonderful sense ofhumor AND a belief in educating the young...and young at heart!This is a wonderful book and I intend to read off of Nate's work.

The Science Unfair was just as good as the first book in this series, with more extraterrestrial (as well as elementary school) hijinks sprinkled with interesting science tidbits and a great little experiment at the end to top it all off. Can't wait to read this to my kids some day.

This Book is pretty good I recommend it for anyone who likes aliens a being a "ninja" and traveling.

The premise and story line is interesting to kids. I like that it teaches some science and has an experiment in the end. However, the dialog ruined the book series, the word choice needs improvement or at least definitions, and ultimately even though the main character learns some science in these books, he still hates it which is not a good role model.This book uses advanced words that are both difficult to read and difficult to understand conceptually. I would not mind that so much if they at least defined the words, but the book does not define or explain anything beside whatever science concept they want you to learn in the book. So super magnet was defined in this book but not civilization (even though its used many times throughout the series).This book talks about batteries and magnets, but it does not really explain it in a way that a first grader with no knowledge of the concepts could even possibly understand what they were actually talking about. The other books in the series have the same issue - nothing is really explained enough to understand if you have zero background in the concept. So teach kids about magnets and batteries are or at least have a book on it for them before reading this story book... or maybe have them play with some magnets first.Sadly, kids had a lot of recall issues with this book. They could not even tell me a summary of what happened. They read it and enjoyed it but could not answer any questions about it.Throughout the book series the language modeled is in poor taste. First there are curse words like dang and even the alien curses using like floofy - but its clearly described as a curse word by the book itself. Second the books includes derogatory words like dunce, weirdo, dumb. etc. Third there is teasing and belittling. Fourth siblings threaten each other including physical harm. The parents also seem to allow a certain degree of this and talk to the kids in less than appropriate ways even joining in on teasing of their own kids. The entire time my son was reading this book, I was pointing out how we don't talk like this, don't put people down like that, and should never treat someone that way etc. My son kept saying I know I know... but what you read and what you watch eventually comes out of your mouth so if I had read the first three books of this series myself before I let my son read them, I would have returned the entire series immediately and got my money back!Finally many behaviors are not what you want your kids to be doing. The neighbor kid does his homework for him and tells him the answers instead of tutoring him to succeed or walking him through the thinking process to solve the problem himself. In fact, they do his science fair project for him while he is at baseball tryouts. Often the kids sneak around and lie. Do you want your kid doing any of those things? No. There are little to no consequences for their actions and they don't learn or mature through the process. So these these kids and that alien are not good role models.In the end, these are not books I recommend to anyone because of the poor role models, poor language choices, and lack of reading comprehension. I am sorry that I bought this entire series. My son loved reading them, but we will not be keeping them.