In this sketchy but inspirational profile, Dooling pairs realistic paintings of the home-schooled boy experimenter—usually intent on a book, bottles of chemicals or some gadget—with an early-years account that stresses the influences his mother, and his encroaching deafness, played in shaping a lifelong habit of hard, constant study. Complementing the many other basic bios that focus more on Edison’s later career, this closes with a spread full of Edison inventions and a pointed reminder that they exist because their inventor always wanted to know, “What is this? Why does that happen? How does it happen?” (afterword, resource lists) (Picture book/biography. 8-10)
