Timeless Thomas: How Thomas Edison Changed Our Lives - Hardcover

Barretta, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805091084 ISBN 13: 9780805091083

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2012

Synopsis

What do record players, batteries, and movie cameras have in common?

All these devices were created by the man known as The Wizard of Menlo Park: Thomas Edison.

Edison is most famous for inventing the incandescent lightbulb, but at his landmark laboratories in Menlo Park & West Orange, New Jersey, he also developed many other staples of modern technology. Despite many failures, Edison persevered. And good for that, because it would be very difficult to go through a day without using one of his life-changing inventions. In this enlightening book, Gene Barretta enters the laboratories of one of America's most important inventors.

About this title

About the Author

Gene Barretta has written and illustrated several award-winning books for young readers, including Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin, as well as Dear Deer and Zoola Palooza. He lives in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Leslie, and their son, Ben.

From School Library Journal

Gr 4-7-Distinctive cartoon illustrations infused with contemporary warmth and 21st-century humor compare electronic products used by today's youth on one side of the page to inventions developed in Thomas Edison's research labs and patented by him on the other. Boys recording music made with an electric guitar and keyboard are juxtaposed with Edison's tinfoil phonograph. A boy listening to his sound mixer, a girl with a multi CD player, and a girl listening to her iPod are compared to dictation machines and the first talking doll. A boy making photocopies of his face is compared to Edison's electric pen. Modern moviemaking is linked to Edison's Kinetograph, the first movie camera, the Kinetoscope for viewing images, and the Kinetephone for projecting sounds with images. Edison's discovery of radio waves, development of telegraph technology, and a useful light bulb with a community-wide power system are showcased. This will be a useful tool to introduce history and inventions to reluctant readers or students as the book stays tightly focused on Edison's work rather than on his personal life. Those looking for more biographical information about the scientist can try David Adler's A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison (Holiday House, 1996) or Melvin and Gilda Berger's What Makes the Light Bright, Thomas Edison? (Scholastic, 2007).-Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MIα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0805091084
• ISBN 13: 9780805091083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Barretta Gene