Mobile phones are a ubiquitous technology with a fascinating history. There are now as many mobile phones in the world as there are people. We carry them around with us wherever we go. And while we used to just speak into them, now mobiles are used to do all kinds of tasks, from talking to twittering, from playing a game to paying a bill. Jon Agar takes the mobile to pieces, tracing what makes it work, and puts it together again, showing how it was...

Mya Parsons runs her school's social justice club with her best friend, Cleo. Her lifelong desire is to work for the United Nations and change the world, and then bask in all the ensuing adulation. Her more immediate desire is to get a phone, preferably one like Cleo's, with a leopard-print case to match. When her distracted dad and her long-distance mom (temporarily in Myanmar taking care of Mya's grandmother) both say no, no way, and possibly never,...

Seventeen-year-old Julie fell in love with Sam the day she met him, and planned to attend college with him; but Sam died, and getting rid of his things, trying to erase him from her life is not working, so desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls his cellphone expecting to hear his voicemail--but then Sam answers, and suddenly their cellphones become the living connection between them, a connection Julie finds impossible to let go.

It's bad enough when high-school senior Keeley grabs the wrong phone while leaving her small town's end-of-summer fair. It's even worse when she discovers that the phone she now has belongs to the obnoxious, self-centered Talon and that he's just left for football camp...with her phone. Reluctantly, the two agree to forward messages for a week. And as Keeley gets to know Talon, she starts to like him. Keeley learns there's more to Talon than the egocentric...

Second-grader Sam Graham wants a cell phone to do research and share information but when his parents say no, he devises a new plan that starts a fad at school.

"Twelve-year-old coder Averil can't do anything without her parents knowing. That’s because her mom uses the Ruby Slippers surveillance app to check where she is, who she texts, and even what she eats for lunch. Averil wonders how she’s ever going to grow up if she’s not allowed to learn from mistakes. When she learns that Ruby Slippers is about to become even more invasive, she teams up with Max, a new kid at school dealing with overbearing...

"Ever wonder how your text message gets from your phone to your friend's phone? You type it, hit send, and boom -- the text appears on your friend's phone just moments later. But how?! From your brain to your fingers to your phone, once you hit send, off your message goes on a journey that seems impossibly far: traveling through the air, underground, under oceans, and even through mountains, in seconds. Turns out texts are big on adventure, and this...

Fascinated by a cell phone and online friends, Bruno the bear then learns about the importance of real friends.