What's It All About?
Brown has created a picture book focused on young Albert Einstein. Children can see that he wasn't always this old man sticking his tongue out. He was ornery, and strange but brilliant. Brown's book does a fine job of illustrating the fact that we all start somewhere.
What'd I Think?
While the story about Einstein's young life was enlightening, he comes out looking worse in my mind than he did going in. Who knew he was such a jerk in his younger years? It's not the authors fault as they didn't commit the bad behaviors listed but it just put a sour taste in my mouth. THe illustrations were fantastic.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars!
What'd They Think?
Booklist
(September 01, 2004; 9780618492985)
Gr. 3-5. Young readers won't come
away from Brown's newest picture-book biography understanding the theory of
relativity, but they will be heartened by the parallels between their own
experiences and those of an iconic science guy. The author-illustrator of Mack
Made Movies 0 (2003) and other books presents the future Nobel Prize winner as
a sallow, sunken-eyed little boy who lingers on the sidelines as other boys
roughhouse, spends hours building a house of cards "fourteen stories
high," and vexes his teachers (one tells him that "he would never get
anywhere in life"). Brown's language dips into vagueness when it's time to
describe the mature scientist's contributions, and the accompanying artwork is
often disappointingly generic, awkwardly incorporating computer-generated
elements that overwhelm the delicate ink-and-watercolor style used elsewhere.
Still, this joins Frida Wishinsky's What's the Matter with Albert? 0 (2002) as
one of the very few picture-book biographies of Einstein available. Try giving
it to older elementary students, who will get the most out of the detailed
author's note and bibliography featuring many books for adults. --Jennifer Mattson
Copyright 2004 Booklist
Publishers Weekly
(October 18, 2004; 9780618492985)
Brown (Mack Made Movies) shapes
an impressionistic portrait of Einstein in his early years, opening with
comments of family members gazing upon the newborn (his grandmother says he is
"much too fat" and "his mother fears his head is too big").
Writing in the present tense, the author shares anecdotes that reveal young
Einstein's character: his temper tantrums scare away his tutor; he brings
"a single-minded attention" to such pastimes as building elaborate
houses of cards; his parents so encourage his independence that they allow him
to wander the streets of Munich alone at the age of four; and the boy early on
displays an extraordinary skill at and fascination with mathematics (though
other schoolwork bores him). True to the book's title, Brown emphasizes ways in
which Einstein fails to fit in with his peers. He dislikes sports, is disturbed
rather than excited at the sight of soldiers parading in the street and, as the
only Jewish student in school, is taunted by his classmates. The writing
occasionally becomes muddy when discussing Einstein's scientific thinking and
discoveries ("He says that everything is in motion and when something
moves very fast, as fast as light, strange things happen, like clocks running
slower and objects becoming shorter"), targeting the book more to kids who
identify with the hero's personality traits than to those interested in the
man's ideas. But Brown's narrative and appealingly quirky pen-and-ink and
watercolor art effectively illuminate the eccentricities and intelligence of
Einstein the boy and the man. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All
rights reserved
What Do I Do With It?
Students will create a timeline of Albert Einstein's life. They can add enhancements such as pictures or drawings of him at varying ages, his discoveries, etc.
