An engaging mix of biography, social-emotional skills, the development of a musical instrument, and the STEM process.
How did the electric guitar come to be?
Few would guess that the inventor of the mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar couldn’t even play. But what inventor Leo Fender excelled at was creating prototypes, collecting feedback, experimenting, refining, and improving. From childhood, he was interested in how things worked and how to fix what was broken, tinkering with radios and even finding a way to improve his vision when he lost the use of an eye. His parents didn’t see a future in such work, however, so he trained as an accountant. When the Great Depression hit, few had a need to keep track of money, but everyone needed to mend broken belongings, so he opened a repair shop. There he became aware of lap steel guitars, and the rest, accompanied by trial and error, is history. This tale of an idiosyncratic man with a curious mind serves as a virtual textbook on the STEM process and shows the value of applied inquiry, open-mindedness, and resilience. Useful for showing connections between different disciplines and how innovation can be implemented, this interesting story, told with energy and accompanied by appealing illustrations of the bespectacled White tinkerer surrounded by his gadgets, traces the history of the electric guitar we know today.
An engaging mix of biography, social-emotional skills, the development of a musical instrument, and the STEM process. (author’s note, bibliography, further reading, glossary) (Picture book/biography. 5-10)Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-25186-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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