Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein - Hardcover

Brown, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618492984 ISBN 13: 9780618492985

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004

Synopsis

Spare, precise text and humorous illustrations reveal Albert Einstein's strange childhood, including his mania for puzzles and problems, his love of Mozart's music, and how he grew into one of the most important thinkers in history.

About this title

About the Author:

Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies.” He lives in New York with his family.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2-5–This well-crafted picture-book biography focuses on Einstein's hard-to-classify brilliance, which led to awesome scientific discoveries, but all too often left him a misunderstood outsider. Brown describes his subject's loving, cultured parents who were frequently nonplussed by their son's behavior and temper. He found himself the "odd boy" at school, and as the only Jewish student, was sometimes taunted by other children. He puzzled his instructors as well; though clearly gifted in science, math, and music, he was an indifferent student in most subjects. Brown's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations, rendered in a palette of dusky mauve and earthy brown, portray a doubtful, somewhat unhappy-looking child, except for a picture in which he gazes fondly at a compass, a gift that astonishes him as he ponders its mysteries. In many scenes he is marginalized on the sidelines, set apart by color and shading. One dramatic spread features an adult Einstein pushing his child in a carriage, looking small against a backdrop that highlights some of the scientific puzzles that so engaged him. Through eloquent narrative and illustration, Brown offers a thoughtful introduction to an enigmatic man. This book will pique the interest of readers with little or no knowledge of Einstein.–Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0618492984
• ISBN 13: 9780618492985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32