Science Fair Season

Odd. Incredible. Innovative. Not Just Another Baking Soda Volcano.

In the way that Word Freak exposed the hidden world of competitive Scrabble players, now Science Fair Season pulls back the curtain on the highly competitive and high-stakes world of high school science fairs.

Each year, the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair brings together over 1,500 of the most talented students from more than 50 countries, with over $4 million prizes and scholarships at stake. Their investigations and experiments are breathtaking and mind-boggling, from creating bionic prosthetics to conducting groundbreaking stem cell research, from training drug-sniffing cockroaches to taking on big corporations. Not just a competition, it has become a recruiting field, with representatives from elite universities and the world's top medical programs attending these fairs looking to spot young prodigies, and even to get a jump on what's being researched.

Judy Dutton follows twelve of these remarkable teenagers and tells gripping stories of their road to the big competition. Some will win, some will lose, but all of their lives are left changed forever. With not just fascinating stories of imaginative projects, but also of compelling and interesting kids, Science Fair Season is Spellbound for the Bunsen Burner Set.

JUDY DUTTON is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, New York. Since graduating from Harvard with a degree in English and American Literature, she's contributed to Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Glamour, Redbook, Women's Health, msn.com, and other magazines and websites. She is also the author of Secrets from the Sex Lab, an eye-opening look at the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries in the realm of sexual behavior.