Exclusive: Secret S.T.E.A.M. Society Coming from Papercutz | News

Today we’re breaking some Papercutz news, about a new nonfiction series that looks like it’s a cut above your usual middle-grade nonfiction series: The Secret S.T.E.A.M. Society. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Set inside the London Academy of Ideas and Ingenuity—a fictional 6-12 grade school that champions creativity and collaboration—the series follows a rotating cast of inventive students as they tackle real-world challenges through hands-on learning, experimentation, and a dash of fantasy.  Each volume begins on campus before launching readers into globe-spanning adventures where they might shrink to microscopic size, time-travel through history, or even cross galaxies in pursuit of knowledge.

Now, we’ve all seen a lot of books with the “learning is fun, kids!” vibe and most of them are awful. This series stands out for a couple of reasons. The covers are lively, the writers are real comics writers, the art is good, and it’s edited by Adam Wallenta, creator of Punk Taco and a zany guy in his own right. Plus, each volume includes a foreword by an actual expert in the topic, who also a “verification specialist” (I think that’s a fact-checker that has gone to grad school). It sort of looks like First Second’s Science Comics and History Comics, and that’s a good model to follow. Here’s a look at the lineup:

The Secret S.T.E.A.M. Society: Horses, by writer Trevor A. Mueller and artist Gabriel Mayorga, follows a novice rider as she and her classmates learn about horses on every level from the microscopic to the cosmic. Foreword by Dr. Carey A. Williams, a specialist in equine nutrition at Rutgers University. The 128-page book is rated for ages 7-12 and will be released on February 10, 2026, as a paperback priced at $12.99 and a hardcover for $19.99.

The Secret S.T.E.A.M. Society: Music, by writer Trevor A. Mueller and artist Christian Colbert, takes a deep dive into the science of music, from vibrations and waves to our own vocal cords. Albert R. Lee, a tenor and scholar at Yale School of Music, contributes the foreword. Like the first one, this 128-page book is rated for ages 7-12. It will be published on April 12, 2026, as a paperback for $12.99 and a hardcover for $19.99.

The Secret S.T.E.A.M. Society: Spaceflight, by writer Paul Kupperberg and artist Bill Walko, is the third volume, spanning ancient rocketry to modern space flight. Ancient rocketry? Sign me up! Kupperberg is a veteran comics writer who also wrote for the Weekly World News for a while, so he knows how to spice up a topic. He also wrote the Life with Archie series where the Riverdale gang grows up and gets married and has all kinds of adult situations; I interviewed him for Publisher’s Weekly, and it’s one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done. And Walko is also a veteran comicker. Putting these two together seems like a winning bet.

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