My technophile firstborn gave this book to his younger siblings for Christmas two years ago. It’s a totally fun book that explains how over 100 things work in simple, nontech language, using the most common 1000 words. The kids didn’t really dive into it right away, so for awhile I would a read a page a day to my youngest, who wasn’t into reading on his own. I learned not to read the whole page, but just enough until I could see he was bored and had had enough. There’s a lot of text on each page, more than enough for a child to be interested in. This is the kind of book that will grow with a child for sure. He or she may not read it all at once, but by the time he/she is an adult hopefully he/she will have read it all and be super smart about techy-stuff. Not only will your kids know how things work, but they will be able to teach others how they work in simple terms. I’ve noticed some of the kids have picked it up on their own lately. It’s only $15.69 through Amazon Prime! It would make a great gift for anybody who likes to learn how things work, especially teens, dads or grandpas. Or just buy it for you and make an excuse that it is for homeschooling! It’s got over 800 reviews on amazon with an average of 4 stars!

Here’s what amazon says about it:

In Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, things are explained in the style of Up Goer Five, using only drawings and a vocabulary of the 1,000 (or “ten hundred”) most common words. Explore computer buildings (datacenters), the flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), the things you use to steer a plane (airliner cockpit controls), and the little bags of water you’re made of (cells).