The Rollercoaster
Holding on tight
The ride that is wonderful, then awful, then wonderful again, and why it is hard to get off.
A flashlight on the machinery inside people. Ages 9-12 · about 40 pages.
Be first when it's ready
The story
Invented people, a real situation, told in short chapters with big pictures.
What happened here
The mechanism in plain words, said straight: facts flat, odds with their "unless".
Where it comes from
How people and systems get this way, so the reader stops guessing it's their fault.
Puzzle pieces
Questions to talk about, with no answer key. The reader decides.
This book is about intermittent reward and holding on. It shows how that works without taking sides and without talking down, and it ends with questions instead of a lesson. Your kid may ask you something afterwards. That's the point.
The Grown-Ups' Guide
Every Ashlight book gets a free guide for the grown-up reading along: notes on each chapter, every source we used with a link so you can check us, and questions for the car ride. The guide for The Rollercoaster isn't finished yet. When it is, it lives right here, free, with no email needed to read it. Want a note the day it's up?
Next in the reading order: The Elephant in the Dark
