Billed as notes taken by the smartest person in your class, the Big Fat Notebook series (2 new titles) breaks down advanced concepts for students struggling to connect with dull or off-putting subjects. Simply on a visual level, these chunky guides feel approachable due to the winning combination of their handwritten font, cartoon and doodle illustrations, ample whitespace, and color coding. As for the content, these are excellent supplements for standard textbooks, offering readers friendly introductions to foundational concepts while using plain language, clear examples, and end-of-chapter quizzes to reinforce key concepts. While these aren't replacements for textbooks, they act as a solid bridge between students and more academic writing, much like the Dummies books for adults do. Chemistry features 12 units, kicking off with lab basics, properties of matter, and the periodic table and wrapping up with acids and bases, chemical compounds, and thermodynamics. The concepts build in complexity as readers advance through the book, but the individual chapters--always relatively short--break the units' key points into manageable segments relayed in an affable tone. Excellent support for classroom or at-home learning.

This guide to high school chemistry is formatted as if it were a notebook containing notes written by the top student in class. This resource is divided into twelve units of two to five sections each. The subsections cover basic topics like conducting experiments, lab safety, and states of matter as well as more advanced topics like quantum theory and laws of thermodynamics. The page design mimics handwritten text, with colored sidebars for important facts, highlighting and bold headers for important words, underlined lists, colored figures, and diagrams. Each unit ends with a quiz to test retention; answers are listed on the following page. While most of the explanations and definitions are clear enough to comprise a primary study source, a few of the definitions may require backup or secondary sources for thorough understanding. The spacious, easy-to-read layout makes this an efficient reference book: Finding specific topics is easy (made easier with a lengthy index), and reviewing the content feels like reading through class notes. While not sufficient in itself to substitute for a chemistry text, paired with a class and a conventional textbook, this guide should go far in helping students master high school level chemistry. A useful supplement for studying and test preparation. (index) (Nonfiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.