Science readers are to be found if you look around enough as this book demonstrates.  It is the fictional story of Massimo, a boy who regularly throws his uncle's lunch off a bridge to his boat as his uncle rows by below.  Galileo happens to see that the bread and the cheese land at the same time.  The story ends atop the leaning Tower of Pisa, as legend suggests Galileo did.

The illustrations are a little disappointing, the people in particular. The story is sometimes forced as math and science readers often are; however, overall it is a great tale that teaches a basic principle of physics sure to have your children dropping objects from heights.  It even alludes to Galileo's ramp experiments on acceleration.  The last page briefly fills in the reader on the period in history, what in the story is fact and fiction, and the formula for calculating speed.

Overall this is a great introductory physics science book.

Nicely drawn images and fairly detailed text overview important inventions and their inventors from Gutenberg's Movable Type (1438) to the Laser (1960). Arranged in chronological order, the descriptions give some historical background and scientific details about each invention. There is a certain amount of typical problems in the text regarding the medieval era to be full of "darkness and superstition" and a rather incomplete and somewhat erroneous account of Galileo's run-in with the Catholic Church.

The inventions covered are: Movable Type, the Microscope, the Telescope, the Mechanical Calculator, the Steam Engine, the Power Loom, the Submarine, the Cotton Gin and Mass Production, the Steamboat, the Electric Battery, the Jacquard Automatic Loom, the Electric Motor and the Electric Dynamo, Photography, the Mechanical Reaper, the Revolver Pistol, the Telegraph, the Underwater Diving Apparatus, the Sewing Machine, the Internal Combustion Engine, the Machine Gun, Dynamite, the Typewriter, Telephone, Phonograph/gramophone, Electric Light Bulb, Electric Power Station, Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, the Automobile, Alternating Current, the Tesla Coil, Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, Iconoscope, Kinescope, Powered Aircraft, the Vacuum Cleaner, the Triode Radio Vacuum Tube, Mass Production and the Automobile, the Battle Tank, the Liquid-Fuel Rocket, the Jet Engine, Xerography, the Helicopter, the Scuba System, the First Electronic Computer, the Transistor and the Laser.