When Jack Andraka was thirteen, he had a whole pile of problems. An outsider at school, he knew he didn’t fit in and a close family friend was dying of cancer. But instead of giving in to the bullying and the despair, he decided to try to create a better method of cancer detection. After conducting two years of research and asking hundreds of universities and companies for help, to no avail, Jack was finally able to secure the lab space necessary to test out his ingenious idea. In the end, he did it. Jack’s early-detection test for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancers has the potential to be over four hundred times more effective than the medical standard—at a fraction of the cost. Jack was just fifteen at the time he came up with his solution.

Jack Andraka’s story is not just one of inspiring teenage success; it is a story of overcoming depression and homophobic bullying, and of finding the resilience to persevere. Whatever your age and interests, his book will motivate you to pursue your own dreams in the face of resistance, and to never stop learning. Full of fun, simple experiments you can try at home, Breakthrough is an amazing personal story and a reminder of why young people’s ideas deserve to be heard.