Two best friends travel through time to solve classroom science challenges with the help of history’s most brilliant minds.
Caroline Fernandez introduces us to a clever duo in the Asha and Baz series, which starts with a mission to build a model rocket. When Asha and Baz hit a wall with their project, they use a magic stick to travel back to 1957 to meet Mary Sherman Morgan, the scientist who invented the fuel for America’s first satellite. This first book sets a fun, educational tone for a series that currently includes six published installments, with more planned for the future. By blending magical realism with real-world STEM concepts, the author makes historical discovery feel like a personal adventure for young readers.
This series is a great choice for English Language Learners because the writing is direct and avoids heavy use of confusing idioms. The sentence structures are kept simple to help students maintain momentum as they move through the chapters. Dharmali Patel’s black-and-white illustrations appear frequently, offering visual breaks and helping readers see exactly how scientific experiments or historical settings look. Having the same characters and time-travel “rules” in every book creates a sense of predictability that helps struggling readers feel more familiar and thus more capable as they progress through the series. In a classroom setting, these books are useful tools for connecting literacy with science, allowing students to explore complex topics like paleontology or chemistry without feeling buried by the text.
Total Books in Series: 6 Best Starting Point: Asha and Baz Meet Mary Sherman Morgan
