Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
I is for Idea: An Inventions Alphabet
Illustrator: Kandy Radzinski
Nonfiction Picture Book Series
For ages 5 to 10
Sleeping Bear Press, 2005 ISBN: 978-1585362578
If you take the time to look around your home you will realize that your world is full of inventions of all kinds. Some are obvious, like the computer on your desk and the bulb in the light fixture over your head. Others are less so. For example if you open your freezer you will probably find a bag of frozen vegetables inside. If it wasn't for Clarence Birdseye's observations and experiments frozen foods would not exist.
In this interesting and carefully researched book the author has created an alphabet book that celebrates the creativity and genius of inventors. It also highlights some of the inventions which make our lives easier, safer, and more comfortable today.
On each page the author has a brief introductory poem which is then expanded on in a sidebar of text. Readers will learn about how dynamite was invented, how Louis Braille invented a way for the blind to be able to read, how the microwave was invented "by accident," and more. Readers will come to see that inventors often build their inventions basing their work on the ideas developed by others, and that the process is very rarely, if ever, an easy one.
From neon lights to peanut butter, and from the X-ray to the jet engine, readers will take a fascinating journey through pictures and words into the lives of the men and women who have made our world a better place through their hard work and determination to succeed.
At the back of the book the author asks her readers some interesting questions and she also provides some further information about the patent process and why it is important for inventors to patent their work.
