01 / FOLLOW
The real sequence
Readers follow a product from raw material to finished goods without skipping the steps that make the process make sense.
Independent publishing · STEM fiction for curious young readers
Stories that put you inside the factory.
Tellurium Publishing creates fiction that lets young readers follow how real products are made — step by step, machine by machine — and then watch the characters use what they learned to solve a real business problem.
Inside the first book
A plate heat exchanger: two streams of milk pass on opposite sides of thin steel plates so heat can move without the milk mixing.
The idea
As close as a book can get to a real factory tour.
A good factory tour makes you want to keep following the pipes, watching the machines, and asking what happens next. Our books are built to preserve that feeling. The story does not stop for the technical material. The technical material gives the characters something worth figuring out.
02 / LOOK
Real machinery
Equipment matters. We explain what machines do, why they are there, and how the parts of the process connect.
03 / DRAW
Visual field notes
Character-created drawings help readers picture machinery and processes that are difficult to understand from words alone.
04 / SOLVE
Use what you learned
The business solution has to grow out of the tour. If the kids had not understood the factory, they could not have found it.
Forthcoming · Kids Consulting Co. · Book 1
Coventry Creamery
A family visit turns into an unusually detailed trip through a small Vermont creamery — and then into a problem Emily and Ozey cannot stop trying to solve.
The first case
First learn how the cheese is made. Then figure out what the business needs.
Emily likes machines she can take apart on paper. Ozey notices prices, waste, inventory, and anything that does not add up. At Coventry Creamery, those two ways of looking at the world start to overlap.
They follow milk from the tanker through testing, separation, pasteurization, vats, curds, cheddaring, milling, pressing, aging, cottage-cheese production, packaging, and cold storage — while slowly realizing that the creamery itself is in trouble.
Milk delivery→Pasteurize→
Curds→Cheddar→
Aging→Cottage cheese→Problem solving
From the actual book
See what the characters see.
The illustrations are part of the explanation. They show unfamiliar machinery, physical processes, and moments when a reader can understand the words but still need a picture to truly see what is happening.
Our rule
We simplify the explanation, not the underlying process.
Young readers can handle real machinery, process, tradeoffs, constraints, and technical vocabulary when those details answer questions they genuinely want answered. Accuracy and storytelling are not competing goals.
How a KC Co. story works
Tour first. Solution later.
01 / ENTER
Go inside the business.
The kids begin as visitors. They have to understand the people, product, and physical process before they know what problem matters.
02 / UNDERSTAND
Follow how it is actually made.
The tour goes deep enough that readers can understand not just the sequence, but the reasons behind it.
03 / NOTICE
See the constraints.
Equipment, labor, ingredients, shelf life, waste, inventory, cost, and customers all become part of the story.
04 / TRY
Come up with ideas — including bad ones.
The kids test assumptions, get things wrong, learn why ideas fail, and use those failures to narrow the problem.
05 / SOLVE
Use the factory knowledge.
The eventual insight should only be possible because they paid attention inside the factory.