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If you are in Class 8, or your child is, the science and maths books may look different from the ones an older cousin used. NCERT has replaced them with new books, written for the middle stage. This guide explains what is in each one, where familiar topics now sit, and how to get the most out of them, with a few worked examples. It is written for students aged about 12 to 14 and their parents.
What are the new Class 8 books called?
The science book is Curiosity, a Textbook of Science for Grade 8. Its preliminary pages show a first edition in June 2025, and the 2026-27 copies are marked as a reprint. It has 13 chapters. The Hindi edition is called Jigyasa.
The maths book is Ganita Prakash, in two parts. Part I was first published in July 2025, and Part II in December 2025. Each part has 7 chapters, so the year has 14 in all.
What is in Curiosity?
The contents page lists:
Exploring the Investigative World of Science
The Invisible Living World: Beyond Our Naked Eye
Health: The Ultimate Treasure
Electricity: Magnetic and Heating Effects
Exploring Forces
Pressure, Winds, Storms, and Cyclones
Particulate Nature of Matter
Nature of Matter: Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures
The Amazing World of Solutes, Solvents, and Solutions
Light: Mirrors and Lenses
Keeping Time with the Skies
How Nature Works in Harmony
Our Home: Earth, a Unique Life Sustaining Planet
Some old topics are easy to find: microorganisms are in Chapter 2, forces in Chapter 5, and light in Chapter 10. Others are grouped in new ways. Pressure sits with winds, storms and cyclones in Chapter 6, and Chapter 9 is about solutions. Chapter 11, Keeping Time with the Skies, is about how the sky gives us days, months and calendars.
What is in Ganita Prakash?
Part I has: A Square and A Cube; Power Play; A Story of Numbers; Quadrilaterals; Number Play; We Distribute, Yet Things Multiply; and Proportional Reasoning-1.
Part II has: Fractions in Disguise; The Baudhayana-Pythagoras Theorem; Proportional Reasoning-2; Exploring Some Geometric Themes; Tales by Dots and Lines; Algebra Play; and Area.
The names are playful, but the ideas are familiar. "A Square and A Cube" covers squares, square roots, cubes and cube roots. "Power Play" is about exponents. "We Distribute, Yet Things Multiply" is about multiplying out brackets, which leads to algebraic identities.
Three worked examples from the new books
Science: pressure (Curiosity, Chapter 6). The chapter defines pressure as force per unit area, with the SI unit pascal (Pa). A box weighing 600 N rests on a face of area 0.2 m². Pressure = 600 / 0.2 = 3000 Pa. Turn it onto a smaller face of 0.05 m² and the pressure is 600 / 0.05 = 12,000 Pa. Same weight, four times the pressure. That is why a sharp knife cuts better than a blunt one. Common mistake: dividing area by force.
Maths: the Baudhayana-Pythagoras theorem (Ganita Prakash Part II, Chapter 2). The chapter opens with Baudhayana's Śulba-Sūtra (c. 800 BCE) and the problem of making a square with double the area of a given square. Take a square of side 5 cm, area 25 cm². The square on its diagonal has double the area, 50 cm², so the diagonal is √50 = 5√2 cm, about 7.07 cm. Check with the theorem: 5² + 5² = 50.
Maths: squares and cubes (Part I, Chapter 1). Is 1728 a perfect cube? Split it into prime factors: 1728 = 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 3 × 3. The 2s make two groups of three and the 3s make one group, so 1728 = (2 × 2 × 3)³ = 12³. Common mistake: grouping in pairs, which is the test for squares, not cubes. For more practice on the square side, see our guide to squares and square roots.
How should a Class 8 student use these books?
Do the activities. Curiosity is built around investigating. Its first chapter is about how scientists ask questions and test them. Doing the activity at home, even roughly, sticks better than reading it.
Try before you read the answer. Ganita Prakash poses puzzles inside the text. Spend five minutes on each before reading on, even if you do not finish it.
Say it in your own words. After each section, close the book and explain the idea to someone at home in two or three sentences.
Keep a question notebook. Write down anything that puzzled you, and bring it to class.
How can parents help without teaching the chapter?
You do not need to know the maths or science to help. Ask your child to show you one activity a week, and to explain what they expected and what happened. Ask "how do you know?" more often than "is it right?". If a chapter feels hard, look at it together with the contents page so your child can see where it fits in the year.
These books lead straight into the new Class 9 books. Our guide to the new Class 9 NCERT books shows what comes next.
If an idea such as pressure or light through a lens is easier to see than to read, the Fermi Simulation Lab has interactive simulations for ideas that are easier to see than to read.
This week, open the contents page of each book and pick one chapter to start with an activity.
