Review of Ernö Rubik and his Magic Cube

A True Tale with

A CHERRY ON TOP

Peachtree

(pub. 6.11.2024)

32 pages

Ages 4 - 8

Author: Kerry Aradhya

   Illustrator: Kara Kramer

Character: Ernő Rubik

Overview:

"A solitary child, Ernő Rubik grew up in post-World War II Hungary obsessed with puzzles, art, nature, and the underlying patterns and structures. He became a professor of art, architecture, and design, who was still fascinated with how objects work together, sometimes becoming greater than their components.

In a quest to help his students understand three-dimensional objects and how they move—not to mention a desire to entertain himself—he fashioned a cube whose pieces twisted and turned without breaking, and unexpectedly invented the Rubik's Cube, the most popular puzzle in history, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2024."

Tantalizing taste:

"Ernő was curious about the objects around him.

What did they look like on the inside?

Drawing them helped him understand the world.

He was also curious about geometric shapes.

How many ways could he fit them together?

Tangrams, pentominoes, and pentacubes

helped him imagine all the possibilities.

Ernő thought the three-dimensional

objects he created out of his little cubes

were beautiful."

And something more: The author, Kerry Aradhya, kindly shared with me a wonderful inside scoop about the book: "Ernő Rubik's parents were a great inspiration to him, especially his father, who was an aviation engineer. If you look closely, you will see a yellow toy plane hanging from the ceiling of Ernő's room in a few spreads from the book. I love that Kara Kramer incorporated that little detail into the art!" Me too! It's just the type of secret that I find students love to hear when I do school visits.

As a parent of two sons who LOVED to race each other to solve the Rubik's Cube, I was fascinated to learn about the creation of the cube. The section at the back of the book, The Magic Cube, explains: "If you think Ernő  Rubik knew how to solve the puzzle he'd invented, you'd be wrong. That's because he never intended to invent a puzzle at all! It was only after twisting and turning the three-dimensional object, and losing track of its original position, that he became curious about how to restore order to the chaos he'd created ... It took him about a month to find a solution, and he did it using a combination of intuition and logic."

Ernö Rubik and his Magic Cube is a delightful celebration of creativity, intuition and logic!

Review of Bird Girl

Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love

of Nature with the World

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Calkins Creek

(Astra Books for Young Readers)

(pub. 3.12.2024)

48 pages

Ages 7 - 10

Author: Jill Esbaum

   Illustrator: Rebecca Gibbon

Character: Gene Stratton-Porter

Overview for review of BIRD GIRL:

" Gene Stratton-Porter was a farm girl who fell in love with birds, from the chickens whose eggs she collected to the hawks that preyed on them.

When she grew up, Gene wanted nothing more than to share her love of birds with the world. She wrote stories about birds, but when a magazine wanted to publish them next to awkward photos of stuffed birds, she knew she had to take matters into her own hands.

Teaching herself photography, Gene began to take photos of birds in the wild. Her knowledge of birds and how to approach them allowed her to get so close you could count the feathers of the birds in her photos. Her work was unlike anything Americans had ever seen before—she captured the true lives of animals in their natural habitat.

A pioneering wildlife photographer and one of the most popular authors of the early 20th century, this bird girl showed the world the beauty of nature and why it was worth preserving."

Tantalizing taste:

"Geneva takes on the care of sixty-four nests. She visits each one every day, inching forward softly, silently, watching and wondering.

If a bird so much as twitches a wing, she freezes ... and waits for it to relax.

The birds, wary at first, are soon chirping hellos and flitting onto Geneva's head and shoulders, tiny claws tickle poking, as she pulls treats from her apron pocket.

Happy birds, happy bird girl."

And something more: Jill Esbaum, in the Author's Note writes: "All of Gene's books... included plenty of what she sometimes called 'nature stuff.' That nature stuff is what kept readers coming back... They often added that her books had sparked in them a commitment to protect wild places. That was Gene's proudest accomplishment. She knew what happened when nature's wild places were lost. She'd seen it outside her own back door. By 1910, there wasn't much left of her beloved Limberlost Swamp...

So imagine how she would feel to learn that two Indiana conservation groups, inspired by her life and books, began in the 1990s to buy up chunks of farmland and woodsy patches that were once part of the 13,000-acre Limberlost Swamp. Their goal? To bring it back. As of this book's publication, nearly 1,800 acres have been restored."

Review of The Fabulous Fannie Farmer

Kitchen Scientist and America's Cook

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Calkins Creek

(Astra Books for Young Readers)

(pub.1.30.2024)

40 pages

Ages 7 -10

Author: Emma Bland Smith

   Illustrator: Susan Reagan

Character: Fannie Farmer

Overview for Review of The Fabulous Fannie Farmer:

" When Fannie Farmer learned to cook in the late 1800s, recipes could be pretty silly. They might call for 'a goodly amount of salt' or 'a lump of butter' or 'a suspicion of nutmeg.' Girls were supposed to use their 'feminine instincts' in the kitchen (or maybe just guess). Despite this problem, Fannie loved cooking, so when polio prevented her from going to college, she became a teacher at the Boston Cooking School.

Unlike her mother or earlier cookbook writers, Fannie didn’t believe in feminine instincts. To her, cooking was a science. She’d noticed that precise measurements and specific instructions ensured that cakes rose instead of flopped and doughnuts fried instead of burned. Students liked Fannie’s approach so much that she wrote a cookbook. Despite skepticism from publishers, Fannie’s book was a recipe for success."

Tantalizing taste:

"As Fannie whipped and simmered, something revolutionary was cooking in her head. Fannie, you see, had the mind of a scientist. Through trial and error, she noticed that precise measurements made a whole heap of difference. Standard measuring cups and spoons had been invented, but few people thought they were necessary. I mean, who needs standard measurements when you've got your trusty feminine instincts, right?"

And something more: The section in the back of THE FABULOUS FANNIE FARMER, Fannie's Legacy, explains: "If she heard about an amazing new meal at a restaurant, she would rush out to sample it, and sometimes sneak a bit home in order to further analyze the flavors. She really was something of a kitchen scientist. (One writer referred to her ability to 'Sherlock Holmes' a chef's dish - to deduce the methods and ingredients.)" Such sleuthing reminds me of what authors and illustrators of picture book biographies need to do to research, write and illustrate. And Emma Bland Smith did just that as can be seen from the book's extensive Bibliography (with sources marked with an asterick to indicate quotation sources). And Emma even included two of Fannie Farmer's recipes in the book -- I can't wait to bake her Popovers!