Light: A Fairy Tale [PDF + eBook]

An illustrated fairy tale that teaches light, color and optics — four story chapters and a full physics section, 74 pages, for readers ages 9–12. EPUB and PDF.

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When King John XV is crowned king of Amrath, no one is pleased — not the peasants throwing rotten vegetables, not his sensible steward Griselda, and not John himself, who would much rather be slaying dragons than governing. Then a mysterious sorceress slips into the throne room and hands him a candle, with a single warning: don't let it burn all the way down.

John lights it anyway. Inside are the ghosts of five light mages — Albert Einstein, Snell, Thomas Young, Louis de Broglie and James Clerk Maxwell — trapped by a witch and freeable only when the candle is fully burned. To free them without dying in the process, John has to become a light mage himself: riding photons, refracting through prisms, and passing through Young's double-slit experiment, while a rebellion gathers in the square below and a much older betrayal waits to be uncovered.

Written by Sarah Allen and illustrated by Vladimir Djekic, with cover design by Vik Charlie.

What's inside the book

• Four story chapters across 39 pages, each of the trapped mages introducing a different piece of physics — Einstein on the speed of light, Snell on refraction, Young and de Broglie on the wave nature of light, and Maxwell on electromagnetic fields
• Full-page color illustrations at the pivotal moments of the story

Plus an extensive physics section

After the story, a dedicated section walks through the same concepts again in clear, conversational prose, with diagrams for each idea. The real equations are there for readers ready for algebra — and the author says plainly that the math can be skipped without losing the rest.

• The speed of light — including a "try this" that sends you to a minute physics video arguing you can break it, then to Veritasium and Vsauce, and asks what you make of the argument
• Color, wavelength and frequency — the visible spectrum, why colored objects appear the colors they do, and where infrared, microwaves, ultraviolet and x-rays sit on the spectrum
• Reflection — including the classic brainteaser: how tall does a mirror have to be for you to see all of yourself at once? Worked through with the geometry, after you've had a chance to think
• Snell's Law of refraction — the index of refraction, and why light bends, explained twice over: honey on a slide inside the story, and a vacuum cleaner crossing from carpet onto hardwood in the physics section. Plus a "try this" with the PhET "Bending Light" simulator from the University of Colorado.
• Electromagnetic waves — Young's double-slit experiment, the de Broglie equation, the Michelson-Morley experiment, and an introduction to Maxwell's equations and how light travels through the vacuum of space
• Eight conceptual practice questions, with a full answer key that explains the reasoning — including why a mirror seems to swap left and right but not up and down

What you'll get

• An EPUB — for Kindle, Apple Books or Kobo
• A PDF — for any device, or for printing

Both are ready the moment you check out — the download buttons are on the confirmation page. Your order confirmation email also has a View Order and Downloads button, which takes you back to your order page to download them any time.

Looking for the paperback? Light is no longer sold as a separate print edition. The printed story lives in Fairy Tale Physics: Books 1–4, which collects it with Newton's Laws, Fluid Mechanics and Gravity in one illustrated volume. This page is the ebook and PDF.

How this one fits with the other books

Light is one of the earlier Fairy Tale Physics books, and it's built the way the series began: the complete story first, then a separate physics section behind it, with the real equations included for readers who want them. The books written since — Gravity, Allora, Physics Fables, and The Hopeful Queen of the Clockwork Court — weave the science through the story instead and keep the algebra optional. It's a different reading experience, so it's worth knowing which one you're getting.

Every book stands on its own and they can be read in any order, though readers of several will notice the same physicists and recurring touches turning up from kingdom to kingdom.

About the author

Sarah Allen tutored math and physics for twenty years before becoming a full-time writer. She has a physics degree from the University of Washington (graduated with college and departmental honors) and a master's in Cognition and Learning from Columbia. Her goal is to write the sort of physics books she would have wanted as a kid.

Ages 9–12 · 74 pages · Four story chapters and a full physics section · Color story illustrations, with diagrams throughout the science · EPUB and PDF