PACKET!

"But how does it actually work?"

Every kid asks it. Most of us answer "it just... works"-because", honestly, who knows?
This book knows.
When Arlo sends a photo of his cat to his best friend on the other side of the world, that photo doesn't travel. It gets chopped into nine thousand tiny pieces - and every single piece makes the journey alone.
Meet Pip. Small, round, slightly over-confident, and carrying piece number 4,072.
Ride along as Pip is handed a real address, flung down a glowing highway beside a million strangers, fired through a glass thread lying on the floor of the ocean, sealed inside a box nobody else can open, and finally lined back up on a screen on the other side of the planet.
It takes less than a second. It is happening right now, under your feet, while you read this sentence.
And every word of it is true.

Real computer science, told as an adventure-packets, IP addresses, DNS, routers, undersea cables, encryption, servers and TCP, without a single boring paragraph
56 pages of full-colour artwork, built so that every page is a story and a working diagram at the same time
Written for ages 10-12 - the age that stops accepting "it just works"
An honesty page at the back, owning exactly where the story simplified things
Try-it-yourself experiments, so readers can watch their own packets travel across the world

Perfect for curious kids, for reluctant readers who will read anything with pictures, and for any grown-up who has ever been cornered by a question they couldn't answer.
The first book in the But how?! series - big, complicated, invisible things, explained properly and drawn beautifully.