For teachers and librarians
Everybody in the room has been held down by gravity every second of their life, and almost nobody has been told how it works. That is a very good place to start a conversation with a class.
We do the real thing first — why a hammer and a feather hit the ground together, why you genuinely do move the Earth when you jump, why you would be weightless at the centre of the planet rather than crushed. Then we do the invented thing, and the students work out for themselves which parts of the book could happen and which parts are a lie the author told on purpose.
The school talk
- Title
- The Physics of Fantasy: Is There Really a Down?
- Grades
- 4–7
- Length
- 45 minutes
- Formats
- In person in the Los Angeles area, Virtual anywhere
It runs 45 minutes with questions, suits grades 4 through 7, and works as a library session, a classroom visit, or an assembly.
A working surgeon and father of four who built a seven-book fantasy world on real physics and would not let a single error survive a first draft.
Using the free chapter
Chapter one is free to read on this site in full, with no email required, so a whole class can read it at once. It is also the cleanest way to judge the reading level before committing to the book.
Library and classroom ordering
Distribution details will be listed here once the book is available to order.
A discussion guide and a STEM extension will be available here, free, alongside a one-page summary you can forward to an administrator without editing it.
Book the talk, or ask a question
One form for school and library enquiries. It reaches the author directly, nothing is stored, and there is no list attached to it.