From butterflies and beetles to crickets and katydids, these experiments, art projects, and games will bring out the entomologist in every kid. Activities include collecting and sketching insects, making a terrarium for observation, raising mealworms, using math to measure bug strength, gardening to attract butterflies and other insects, and making an insect amplifier. A unique insect board game helps kids learn fascinating bug facts while they play. Sidebars offer a look into the world of professional entomology, as well as gross facts about insects that will provide great playground trivia, including the USDA's guidelines for allowable insect parts per cup of food. Kids will learn that science is not just something to read about, but something they can observe and study in the world around them.

In this special edition from Scientific American, we have collected articles about the latest developments in the field of human evolution—written by the experts who are leading the investigations.

We invite you to explore the pages that follow, to learn more about that fascinating first chapter in everybody’s family history.

Among popular non-fiction titles for adults adapted for younger audiences, this picture book based on Truss' 2004 best-seller about punctuation may be a surprise, considering most kids' indifference to the topic. Yet it proves very effective, thanks to entertaining repackaging that narrows the original's broad purview to the comma, and focuses on cartoonist Timmons' interpretations of humorous comma-related goofs akin to the one referenced by the title (the punchline of an old joke about a panda, here set in a library rather than a bar). While dissolving into giggles over the change in meaning between "Eat here, and get gas," or "Eat here and get gas" (likely to be the most popular of the 14 sentence pairs given), children will find themselves gaining an instinctive understanding of the "traffic signals of language," even without the concluding spread explaining the whys and wherefores.

The newly revised and updated Everything You Need to Know About series provide kids and parents with a quick refresher to 4th through 6th grade curriculum topics. The organization and scope of these concise homework-help guides make them an essential reference resource. Researched according to middle-grade curriculum and current textbooks, and created in conjunction with subject experts, these titles answer kids' most frequently asked homework questions. In AMERICAN HISTORY, students will find everything from accounts of the first Americans to the 21st Century.