The Science of Breakable Things

The Science of Breakable Things is a middle-grade novel by Tae Keller published in 2018. This epistolary novel is presented as seventh-grade protagonist Natalie Napoli’s journal for science class. With the help of her teacher and her friends, Natalie enters a science competition. She hopes to win so she can use the cash prize to take her mother, a botanist who has depression, to see the miraculous cobalt blue orchids in New Mexico. Through her research on science, friendship, family, and depression, Natalie learns a multitude of lessons that help her thrive. In 2021, Keller won the Newberry Medal and the Asian Pacific American Literature Award for her middle-grade novel When You Trap a Tiger.

Plot Summary

Seventh-grader Natalie Napoli receives a yearlong assignment from her new science teacher, Mr. Neely: Choose a scientific question to investigate for the entire school year, and record observations about it in a notebook. However, she also records her thoughts about family, friends, and everyday life, making the notebook a journal. Natalie, the narrator and protagonist, structures the eight parts of her novel according to the steps of the scientific method. Each chapter title is an assignment from her science teacher or a life task.

Natalie’s mother, Alice, has had depression for a few months, but nobody explains this to Natalie. Her mother stopped going to work as a botanist, sleeps a lot during the day, and let all the plants in her greenhouse die—even a cobalt blue orchid from her lab that she grew with Natalie. Unable to explain the illness, Natalie tells no one about it, not even her only friend, Twig. Natalie struggles to pay attention at school. Mr. Neely suggests she enter an egg-drop competition for her science project. For this, students create a contraption that protects an egg when it’s dropped from three stories up. Another student, Dari Kapoor, whom Natalie thinks is the smartest in the class, is also entering it. At first, Natalie isn’t interested.

Even though she’s not allowed in her parents’ bedroom anymore, Natalie sneaks in to get the book her mom wrote about cobalt blue orchids. In New Mexico, toxic chemicals were accidentally released in a certain area, killing all the plants and preventing new ones from growing. Then, miraculously, blue orchids sprouted, although orchids are normally extremely delicate and not blue.

Using the scientific method, Natalie reasons that her mother is like a dormant perennial plant in winter. Something caused this; if Natalie can identify the cause, perhaps she can also identify a cure. She remembers her parents’ hushed conversations about budget cuts and inadequate research findings. Natalie concludes that Mrs. Menzer, her mother’s boss, fired her. Mrs. Menzer is also the mother of Mikayla, Natalie’s former best friend, whom she now avoids. Natalie decides they are both evil.

Natalie decides to enter the contest after all. She hopes to use the prize money to take her mother to see the orchids in New Mexico, which she believes will reinvigorate her passion for science and cure her sickness. Mr. Neely says Twig can work with Natalie on the project too. Natalie’s mother suggests the girls use cereal to protect the egg. However, Natalie ignores the idea and doesn’t share it with Twig or with Dari, who joins their team and starts working with them in class.

Natalie’s grandmother—her dad’s mother, who is Korean—visits them for Thanksgiving, and Natalie’s mother acts lively and talkative. However, she doesn’t do that just for Natalie. Meanwhile, her dad, a therapist named John Yeong-jin, sends her to Dr. Doris for counseling instead of “therapizing” her himself. This makes Natalie feel like both parents are giving up on her. For the first few sessions with Dr. Doris, Natalie refuses to discuss her family. At the mall with her dad, she buys a resilient Korean fire plant for her mom’s Christmas present.

On Christmas morning, Natalie’s mother won’t leave her room. Natalie breaks a bunch of eggs in the greenhouse and has a meltdown in front of Twig. Natalie finally explains what is happening with her family, and Twig is very supportive. On New Year’s Eve, Natalie and her father make Korean dduk for good luck, and her mother enjoys it with them. Natalie opens up to Dr. Doris, discussing each of these events. The students continue working on their project, testing different designs by dropping them out the school window and Dari’s bedroom window.

Natalie’s father takes them to the competition. The three-story building from which they drop the eggs is taller than Dari’s house, and their egg breaks. This means they lose. Another group uses cereal to protect their egg, but it breaks. Natalie is upset that her mother’s idea didn’t work, although she never tried it or told her friends about it.

Natalie feels hopeless, but Twig thinks there’s still a way to help Natalie’s mother: steal Twig’s mom’s credit card, and buy plane tickets to New Mexico. Natalie thinks this idea would never work. Then, she remembers that the last time she and her mother grew a cobalt blue orchid seed, it came from the filing cabinet in Mrs. Menzer’s office. Natalie realizes she can take her mother’s lab keys, ride the bus to the lab, break in, and steal a seed in the middle of the night, when no one is there to stop her. She tells Twig her plan but tells her not to come.

Twig shows up anyway, with Dari in tow. Natalie is angry because this must mean he knows about her mother’s illness. However, they’re a good team. They easily get into the lab, sneak past a sleeping security guard, and head to the third floor, where Mrs. Menzer’s office is. However, there’s a key pad to silence an alarm, and Natalie doesn’t know the code. She tries three random numbers; the light stops flashing, so they enter the hallway.

In Mrs. Menzer’s filing cabinet, Natalie finds a blue Ziploc bag full of seeds like the one Mrs. Menzer pulled the orchid seed from years ago. However, the bag is labeled “iris” instead of “orchid.” Natalie concludes it must be mislabeled, and she takes one seed. On the way out, she notices her mom’s old office. Her nameplate is still there, along with family pictures of Natalie and her dad. Natalie realizes her mother wasn’t fired; she just stopped going to work.

A security guard explains that they set off an alarm by entering the wrong code too many times. Natalie suggests he call Mrs. Menzer instead of the police, and he does. She drives them home, and their parents ground them. She also tells Natalie to ask her mom for the full story about the orchids, which aren’t magical. She suggests Natalie try to smooth things over with Mikayla.

Natalie’s mother explains that they never had an orchid in their greenhouse; it was an iris. The orchids were too rare and delicate to give away or grow outside their lab. Also, she wasn’t fired. Their research on cobalt blue orchids was cut because they couldn’t isolate their healing properties and apply them to humans. This was hard for Alice, and she is depressed, but she realizes she should have talked to her daughter about it. Natalie’s dad also reveals that her mother has had depression before.

Later, Natalie’s mom finds the Korean fire plant in the greenhouse and takes care of it. She also plants the iris seed Natalie stole and starts seeing her own therapist. Natalie concludes that her mom is not exactly the same as before, but she’s not a new person or an imposter; she’s simply more complex than Natalie realized. The same is true for Natalie and for her father. She is thankful that she can be honest with her parents. She also clears the air with Mikayla; they can move forward in peace, although they’re not going to be best friends. She and Twig solidify their new friendship with Dari, and Natalie doesn’t need to write as much in her journal now that she can “speak” openly.