Chemical Education Today
edited by
Book & Media Reviews
The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry
by Larry Gonick and Craig Criddle
Harper Resource, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers:
New York, 2005. 249 pp. ISBN 0060936770 (paper).
$16.95
reviewed by Hal Harris
Okay, I admit it. I learned a lot of my early reading skills
from Bugs Bunny, Batman, and Superman. That said, I still
approached The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry with suspicion
and skepticism. Could it be possible to write a book of chem-
istry jokes that would be bearable?
Well, this book is not a collection of jokes. In its 12 chap-
ters, it teaches most of the important topics of introductory
chemistry, even including a little organic and biochemistry
at the end (just as the textbooks do!), without stinting some
of the more challenging stuff (such as equilibrium, electro-
www.JCE.DivCHED.org Vol. 82 No. 12 December 2005
View publication stats
Jeffrey Kovac
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
chemistry, thermochemistry, and chemical kinetics). Each
page has at least four or five cartoons as well as essential tables
and graphs, and there is enough text to hold the project to-
gether. The subjects are treated with humor, but the science
is correct and the attitude is wonderfully light-hearted. The
cartoons are the work of Gonick, who claims parents and
in-laws who are chemists, but the science is largely due to
Criddle, a professor in the Environmental Engineering and
Science Department at Stanford University. Gonick, the staff
cartoonist for Muse magazine, has done books similar to this
in physics, genetics, and statistics, but with different co-au-
thors.
These guys have won me over. I would be happy if my
own introductory students learned as much chemistry as is
in this book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking
for a good supplement to an introductory chemistry course.
Hal Harris is in the Department of Chemistry and Bio-
chemistry, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
63121; hharris@umsl.edu.
Journal of Chemical Education 1777