What Are You Figuring Now?: A Story about Benjamin Banneker (Creative Minds Biography) - Softcover

Ferris, Jeri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876145217 ISBN 13: 9780876145210

Publisher: LernerClassroom, 1988

Synopsis

In 1791 plans for the new capital city, Washington, D.C., were in the works, but someone was needed to help with the surveying. Thomas Jefferson recommended Benjamin Banneker for the job. Banneker was a free black man who lived at a time when black Americans had few, if any, rights. Yet he was an accomplished farmer, mathematician, astronomer, and surveyor. What Are You Figuring Now? is the story of a man who was never afraid to try something new, no matter how difficult.

About this title

About the Author

JERI CHASE FERRIS is the award-winning author of twelve biographies for children and young adults, published by Lerner Books and HoughtonMifflin/Harcourt. She specializes in biographies of people from 1776 to 1936 who overcame difficulties or discrimination or worse, to do great and important deeds for America. Many of her books are about multicultural heroes who, until recently, have been sadly omitted from history. Others are about important people you may not know, yet. For example - Noah Webster! NOAH WEBSTER & HIS WORDS, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, is an SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner for best nonfiction book of 2012. Her books have won lots of other awards too (see www.jerichaseferris.com).

Jeri retired from a happy 30-year teaching career several years ago in order to write full time. As a history major, Jeri loves the research process (easier than actually writing!) and she travels all over the world to research and collect information on her subjects. She is currently completing a historical fiction for young adults set in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) during the 900-day Siege in WWII. This book, SURROUNDED: THE NAZI NOOSE, comes from her passion for Russia and its history, culture, and people, and her desire to convey the unimaginable experiences of the people and youth of 1941 Leningrad to American young people and adults. 

When she's not writing or traveling or researching or reading, Jeri is probably riding her big sorrel rescue horse Pamyat ("to remember" in Russian), or dancing, or acting, or singing, or playing with her Scottie dog Nasha ("ours" in Russian). Or she might be studying Russian (one of these days she'll get it), or working on her blog or her newspaper column. Speaking of riding, when Jeri was demonstrating her horseback riding skills at the Nebraska State Fair some years ago, she fell off her horse and broke her arm in front of the whole crowd. (One of these days she'll get it.)

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-4 Banneker, born of free black parents near Baltimore in 1731, is remembered for his skill as an astronomer, mathematician, and surveyor. He worked with Andrew Ellicott, the surveyor appointed by George Washington, to lay out the boundaries of Washington, D.C. A great deal of information and a long period of time have been compressed and simplified in an attempt to make Banneker's life and contributions accessible to young readers. Dialogue has been added, most likely for the same reason, although it is sometimes jarring. For example, when Benjamin begins the Quaker school, his grandmother's musing portends the boy's future: " 'Benjie,' she said, 'I wonder what great things you're going to do some day. And I wonder how you can do them on a tobacco farm.' " Little information is given on the restrictive laws of 18th-Century America which would help place Banneker in an appropriate context. No sources are cited with the exception of an acknowledgement to Silvio Bedini, the author of a definitive adult biography entitled The Life of Benjamin Banneker (Landmark, 1984). Bedini and others are noted for further reading in Lillie Patterson's biography for children, Benjamin Banneker: Genius of Early America (Abingdon, 1978; o.p.). Maria B. Salvadore, District of Columbia Public Library
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: LernerClassroom
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0876145217
• ISBN 13: 9780876145210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Johnson Amy