Brainstorm! The Stories of Twenty American Kid Inventors by Tom Tucker. drawings by Richard Loehle (Canada) - (USA)Pages: 150 pages
Ages: 8+
Finished: Sept. 13, 2010
First Published: 1995
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Genre: Children, biography, short stories
Rating: 2.5/5
First sentence:
Young or old, most inventors are thrilled when they see their name on a patent issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.
Acquired: Purchased my own copy.
Reason for Reading: Came with our history curriculum. Read aloud to my ds, a biography at a time over a period of time.
A collection of short biographies featuring kid inventors, focusing on what they invented and how it came to be. Includes such inventions as earmuffs, coloured car wax, the Popsicle, water skis, resealable cereal box tops and others.
Neither of us was particularly thrilled with this book. The inventions I've mentioned above were the ones that ds enjoyed most. A lot of the other inventions were things he couldn't care less about like tufted bedspreads or couldn't relate to such as the rotary steam engine. Ds was keen when I started reading a story about a real kid (an 8yo or a 13yo) but some of these bios are about 17 or 18 year old's and that is pushing it a bit for a 10yo to consider a kid. Then some bios often were about how the inventor got the idea as a kid but didn't bring it to fruition until they were an adult which I think is cheating in regards to the title of the book. Also any mechanical or engineering inventions such as the electrical TV and the rotary steam engine were very detailed with scientific specifics which made the 10 yo's eyes glaze over. By the time we got to the last 5 stories he was begging me not to read the book anymore so I read them quickly in bed one night to if they were worth trudging through and I couldn't find any reason he needed to hear them so we ended the read-aloud there. I wouldn't recommend the book.
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