Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin - Hardcover

Byrd, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803737491 ISBN 13: 9780803737495

Publisher: Dial Books, 2012

Synopsis

Electric Ben is now a 2013 Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Book Award Winner, a Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book, a Horn Fanfare Book, and a  Robert F. Sibert Honor book!

“a true standout...bright, witty, informative and cleverly organized as the man himself.” – The New York Times

A true Renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin was the first American celebrity. In pictures and text, master artist Robert Byrd documents Franklin's numerous and diverse accomplishments, from framing the Constitution to creating bifocals. The witty, wise, and endlessly curious Franklin is the perfect subject for Byrd's lively style and vibrant art. The pages pulse with facts, quotes, and captions, while the inventive design and intricately detailed illustrations make a striking tribute to the brilliant American.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Byrd has been illustrating children's books for over thirty years, and his works include the Newbery Medal-winning Good Masters, Sweet Ladies. He teaches illustration in Philadelphia. He lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife.

From School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-In the 1738 edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, Franklin printed this aphorism: "If you would not be forgotten/As soon as you are dead and rotten,/Either write things worth reading,/Or do things worth the writing." He succeeded admirably, as indicated by the ample catalog of Franklin biographies written for young readers from notables including Jean Fritz, James Cross Giblin, and Candace Fleming. Electric Ben represents a proficient but flawed addition to an already-crowded shelf. Using lucid phrasing and appealing detail, Byrd breaks the main narrative into two-page sections, each roughly related to an episode or subject. Unfortunately, excessive design elements and Byrd's fussy ink-and-watercolor illustrations threaten to overwhelm the informative text. Highlighted aphorisms and spot illustrations peppered throughout each page clutter the design and disrupt the flow of the author's readable account of Franklin's astonishingly fruitful life. The vibrant artwork shifts between intricately rendered tableaux and conceptual illustrations packed with symbols and biographical references, the latter, replete with celestial bodies and waves of energy. Finicky captions, which turn some of the electric-hued pictures into stealth diagrams, offer yet more facts and quotes. Byrd makes a few perplexing choices in his narrative, such as including only minimal mention of Franklin's wife, and identifying his illegitimate son, William, as adopted. In general, while the text may convey the wealth of Franklin's writing-worthy achievements, the visuals prove too frenetic even to capture the boundless energy and creativity of that consummate printer-author-scientist-inventor-statesman.-Robbin E. Friedman, Chappaqua Library, NYα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dial Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0803737491
• ISBN 13: 9780803737495
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40