Hooray For Inventors!

by Marcia Williams

Hip, hip, hooray! Marcia Williams wields her witty comic-book style to applaud the creators of inventions that changed the world — and to inspire the inventor in us all.

What are your eight favorite inventions, and who were the persevering minds behind them? In a style as vivacious and accessible as ever, Marcia Williams honors the fine folks who brought us the printing press, the steam condenser, the steam train, the electric light, all of them stepping stones to ever more awesome inventions to come. Interspersed are brief snapshots of more than a hundred other inventions, from toothpaste to toilet paper rolls, the World Wide Web to, yes, sliced bread. There's also a tribute to women inventors — the force behind such indispensable items as windshield wipers, submarine telescopes, and bulletproof vests.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Picture Books, Biography, History

40 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2005

About the author

Marcia Williams began to develop her distinctive comic-book style at an early age: "When I was about ten and wrote home to my family from boarding school," she says, "I never wrote normal letters. I tried to tell my family about what I was doing in a way that was more fun. Also, my parents didn't let me read comic books, so I decided to create my own."

This former nursery school teacher blends her storytelling skills and humorous illustrations with well-known figures and stories from literature. Her unique style has produced such vivid works and action-packed books as GOD AND HIS CREATIONS: TALES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. "Working on the Old Testament was a joy," Marcia Williams says. "The tales are so rich, it is always possible to find something new within them. Yet, at the same time, they have all the comfort of the familiar." The artist also found pleasure in creating CHARLES DICKENS AND FRIENDS, which presents five retellings of classic Dickens tales. Of her inspiration for this book, she tells of a teacher she once had "who was extremely fierce and angry . . . except when she read the stories of Charles Dickens aloud. Through her, all his characters lived, and I was transported to their Victorian world. I hope that readers will also enter the wonderful world of Charles Dickens through this book."


With BRAVO, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE! and TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE Marcia Williams introduces young readers to the world of William Shakespeare's plays. Another classic she has made much more accessible to children--and more appreciated by them--is THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY. "My mother read me classics, but until I got older I never found them interesting," she says. "If I could make these stories more accessible, I realized, kids wouldn't have to wait until they were grown-up to appreciate them."


Marcia Williams traveled extensively as a child and was educated in Sussex, England, and Switzerland. During her varied career she has worked as an interior designer and has assisted cartoon artist and designer Gerald Scarfe in making papier-mâché and cloth sculptures.

Reviews

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun book to read, but it's a bit difficult to read aloud with all of the captions and fun chatter around the fringes of each page. I ended up only reading aloud the main bits about the inventions, adding just a few of the comments around the page as we'd go.

It reads like a comic book, and has fun cartoonish illustrations to go with it. There is so much information in these pages, we would only read a page or so at a time, so our girls wouldn't get bored or overwhelmed.

We loved that there was a whole page dedicated to women inventors, and that she explained that most women couldn't even get patents for the things they'd invent because of the laws of the time.

We also loved the favorite inventions page. There were so many common things there; items that you use everyday and never really think about who invented them.

[Ashley Fischer]

This is a great book and would go well with a unit that talks about how things become and how things are invented. It would be a great book to show students and follow up with them inventing their own thing. Students would love that and would probably get many ideas from this book. However, the book is very busy and may be quite confusing for younger students because there is so much on one page and the words and pictures are just kind of all over the place. Also, the pictures are not actually photos which may be hard for some students to know what it was that was actually invented if they don’t have an actual picture of it (for example, the invention of the telephone it does not have a picture of a real telephone).

[Jaclin McGuire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives great pictures and info on various inventors including Gutenberg, Watt, Edison, Bell, Wright, Marconi, and a few women inventors.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciated what this book attempted to do, with introducing a variety of inventors and their accomplishments throughout time, I felt that this book became overwhelming very quickly. There was such a significant amount of information being broadcast that, coupled with the illustrations provided, made it challenging to focus on the information being provided. Therefore, while I enjoyed the idea behind this book, it would not be a book that I would recommend very quickly.

[Little A · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was super fun and interesting. It was also funny with the animals on the rim of the page