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The Black Innovators
Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone
In this first picture book in the Black Innovators series, meet the insatiably curious Jim West, who invented a vital piece of the device we all carry in our pockets—transforming how the world communicates today.
Young Jim West loves to pull apart whatever electronics he can get his hands on to see how they work. Those around him say there’s no path for a kid like him to become a scientist, but Jim is determined to forge his own way. His knack for all things electric (and luck in landing a summer job offering the freedom to experiment) lead him to invent an important part of the devices we rely on every day. In this picture book biography for science lovers, future inventors, and anyone aiming to inspire the next generation, author Ainissa Ramirez shares the story of the man who patented the foil-electret microphone, a unit integral to everything from cell phones to hearing aids. Just as Jim West’s advocacy for more diversity in the field paved the way for many scientists of color to follow, Spark inspires readers of all ages to follow their curiosity—and see what it ignites. Back matter provides an author’s note, a time line, a bibliography, and more information on the life and work of Jim West.
Young Jim West loves to pull apart whatever electronics he can get his hands on to see how they work. Those around him say there’s no path for a kid like him to become a scientist, but Jim is determined to forge his own way. His knack for all things electric (and luck in landing a summer job offering the freedom to experiment) lead him to invent an important part of the devices we rely on every day. In this picture book biography for science lovers, future inventors, and anyone aiming to inspire the next generation, author Ainissa Ramirez shares the story of the man who patented the foil-electret microphone, a unit integral to everything from cell phones to hearing aids. Just as Jim West’s advocacy for more diversity in the field paved the way for many scientists of color to follow, Spark inspires readers of all ages to follow their curiosity—and see what it ignites. Back matter provides an author’s note, a time line, a bibliography, and more information on the life and work of Jim West.
40 pages, Hardcover
Published October 21, 2025
About the author
Ainissa Ramirez
6 books58 followersAinissa Ramirez, PhD, loves science. When she was little, Ainissa got the idea of becoming a scientist from her favorite public television show "3-2-1 Contact." This put her on a path to get degrees in materials science from Brown and Stanford universities, and later work as a research scientist at Bell Labs and as a professor at Yale.
Ainissa not only loves science, she loves to share science with others. She has written for Forbes, Time, Science, The Atlantic, American Scientist, and Scientific American. She’s explained science on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS. She also speaks on the topics of science and technology and gave a TED talk on the importance of STEM education. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning title “The Alchemy of Us” (MIT Press). Ainissa has a new picture book coming out in October 2025 that celebrates a hidden figure in science, "SPARK: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone" (Candlewick Press).
Ainissa not only loves science, she loves to share science with others. She has written for Forbes, Time, Science, The Atlantic, American Scientist, and Scientific American. She’s explained science on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS. She also speaks on the topics of science and technology and gave a TED talk on the importance of STEM education. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning title “The Alchemy of Us” (MIT Press). Ainissa has a new picture book coming out in October 2025 that celebrates a hidden figure in science, "SPARK: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone" (Candlewick Press).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 18, 2026
This is the first book in the “Black Innovators” series of the MIT Kids Press. Readers will meet Jim West, born on February 10, 1931 in Virginia, who had an insatiable curiosity about how gadgets worked. Later in life, he helped develop - inter alia - a microphone that does not need to be connected to a source of power in order to work. Many of the devices we rely on today would not have been possible without his ideas. He even worked on a digital stethoscope to detect pneumonia in lungs of young children. (He holds over 250 foreign and U.S. patents!)
Jim was one of those kids who took everything apart to see how they worked, causing the usual disasters and getting into the usual trouble for it. But he loved figuring out the why and how of things, and intended to go to college to study science. His parents discouraged him, because they feared [not without reason] it would be impossible for an African American to get work in that field. It didn't stop Jim: “his dream was bigger than all those negatives.”
After graduation, he did get a position at Bell Labs, “the home of inventions like gadgets for telephones and computer parts called transistors.” It was an ideal job for him. His first project was to augment the sound coming out of headphones. Working on that task led him to explore the potential uses of electrets, materials that have a quasi-permanent electric charge. (Examples, shown by Ramirez, include quartz, teflon, and mylar. They have a quasi-permanent charge because of manufacturing processes that “freeze” an electric field within an insulating material.) Jim got the idea of using electrets to make a microphone that wouldn’t need to be plugged in. He teamed up with another Bell Labs scientist, Gerhard Sessler, and they invented the first practical electret microphone. As Ramirez writes, the microphones “could be made smaller than a button, because they didn’t need big electrical parts to charge them.”
Thanks to Jim, nearly 90 percent of the microphones produced today are based on utilizing electrets and are used in everyday items such as telephones, camcorders, hearing aids, baby monitors, and audio recording equipment among other devices. Jim’s curiosity, the author observes, “changed how the whole world communicates.”
But Jim didn't stop there. He wanted to keep on tinkering, and to help others do the same. In 2001 he became a professor and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, leading research initiatives and assisting both students and other scientists in their own major projects.
Back matter includes an author’s note, a time line, more about the life and work of Jim West, and sources for further information, including a link to a video oral history interview.
Illustrator Setor Fiadzigbey has a background in both science and in comic book production, and these areas of expertise are clear in his expressive, energetic art work.
Evaluation: This picture book biography for kids age 6 and over makes scientific discovery look and sound fun and exciting. Some kids might already know about the kite experiment with electricity by Ben Franklin (although not perhaps the great story of how Franklin tried to electrocute a holiday turkey instead of cooking it.) But, as Ainissa Ramirez pointed out, there aren’t many widely known stories about inventors of color whose patents have transformed the way the world works. She said she wrote this book so that Black children could see their reflections in the fields of science and engineering.
[And yes, there are so many more stories to be told! Two notable examples come to mind. Granville T. Woods, an African American born in Columbus, Ohio in 1856 was the most prolific Black inventor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He came up with numerous inventions including a steam-boiler furnace, telephone, telegraph system, electric railway and automatic air brake for railroad safety. If you thought that whites, and in particular Thomas Edison, would get the most credit for these ideas, you would be correct. Black inventors had little if any protection for their intellectual property at this time in history.
Garrett Morgan, a Black man born in Kentucky in 1877, invented a "safety hood smoke protection device" after seeing firefighters struggling with the suffocating smoke in the line of duty. He founded a company to market the hood but had to hire a white actor to take credit for it. In 1916 he personally used the hood to rescue workers trapped in a water intake tunnel 50 feet beneath Lake Erie. Initially he was not given credit for either the invention or the rescue. While news of the rescue prompted order requests from fire departments all over the country, when officials from southern cities saw pictures of him in the papers, they canceled their orders.]
Hopefully, times have changed.
In any event, young experimenters of all races and ethnicities will enjoy reading about Jim West. Hopefully they will be inspired to seek out the stories of more unheralded minority inventors.
Jim was one of those kids who took everything apart to see how they worked, causing the usual disasters and getting into the usual trouble for it. But he loved figuring out the why and how of things, and intended to go to college to study science. His parents discouraged him, because they feared [not without reason] it would be impossible for an African American to get work in that field. It didn't stop Jim: “his dream was bigger than all those negatives.”
After graduation, he did get a position at Bell Labs, “the home of inventions like gadgets for telephones and computer parts called transistors.” It was an ideal job for him. His first project was to augment the sound coming out of headphones. Working on that task led him to explore the potential uses of electrets, materials that have a quasi-permanent electric charge. (Examples, shown by Ramirez, include quartz, teflon, and mylar. They have a quasi-permanent charge because of manufacturing processes that “freeze” an electric field within an insulating material.) Jim got the idea of using electrets to make a microphone that wouldn’t need to be plugged in. He teamed up with another Bell Labs scientist, Gerhard Sessler, and they invented the first practical electret microphone. As Ramirez writes, the microphones “could be made smaller than a button, because they didn’t need big electrical parts to charge them.”
Thanks to Jim, nearly 90 percent of the microphones produced today are based on utilizing electrets and are used in everyday items such as telephones, camcorders, hearing aids, baby monitors, and audio recording equipment among other devices. Jim’s curiosity, the author observes, “changed how the whole world communicates.”
But Jim didn't stop there. He wanted to keep on tinkering, and to help others do the same. In 2001 he became a professor and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, leading research initiatives and assisting both students and other scientists in their own major projects.
Back matter includes an author’s note, a time line, more about the life and work of Jim West, and sources for further information, including a link to a video oral history interview.
Illustrator Setor Fiadzigbey has a background in both science and in comic book production, and these areas of expertise are clear in his expressive, energetic art work.
Evaluation: This picture book biography for kids age 6 and over makes scientific discovery look and sound fun and exciting. Some kids might already know about the kite experiment with electricity by Ben Franklin (although not perhaps the great story of how Franklin tried to electrocute a holiday turkey instead of cooking it.) But, as Ainissa Ramirez pointed out, there aren’t many widely known stories about inventors of color whose patents have transformed the way the world works. She said she wrote this book so that Black children could see their reflections in the fields of science and engineering.
[And yes, there are so many more stories to be told! Two notable examples come to mind. Granville T. Woods, an African American born in Columbus, Ohio in 1856 was the most prolific Black inventor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He came up with numerous inventions including a steam-boiler furnace, telephone, telegraph system, electric railway and automatic air brake for railroad safety. If you thought that whites, and in particular Thomas Edison, would get the most credit for these ideas, you would be correct. Black inventors had little if any protection for their intellectual property at this time in history.
Garrett Morgan, a Black man born in Kentucky in 1877, invented a "safety hood smoke protection device" after seeing firefighters struggling with the suffocating smoke in the line of duty. He founded a company to market the hood but had to hire a white actor to take credit for it. In 1916 he personally used the hood to rescue workers trapped in a water intake tunnel 50 feet beneath Lake Erie. Initially he was not given credit for either the invention or the rescue. While news of the rescue prompted order requests from fire departments all over the country, when officials from southern cities saw pictures of him in the papers, they canceled their orders.]
Hopefully, times have changed.
In any event, young experimenters of all races and ethnicities will enjoy reading about Jim West. Hopefully they will be inspired to seek out the stories of more unheralded minority inventors.
October 26, 2025
I really enjoyed this book and look forward to sharing it with a young friend who has a similar curiosity to Mr. West.
Capturing the curiosity that sparked Jim West’s becoming a scientist who invented and patented a microphone with a clear tone and the ability to be miniaturized that is in use in dozens of applications around the world, SPARK is an inspiring book to share with children.
Ainissa Ramirez shares Mr. West’s wonder and willingness, as a child, to take things apart to figure out how they work and try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to put them back together. She shows his mischievous shenanigans that literally shock him but don’t deter him. He has the internal determination that has him go to college to study science without financial support from his family.
The illustrations by Setor Fiadzigbey are perfectly aligned to the story and elevate this book. The supplemental material at the end of the book are very informative, well-researched and are sure to make any reader delve further into Mr. West’s life (and provides an ample list of articles and interviews with him) as well as the path to invention of his and previous microphones.
Ms. Ramirez was blessed to actually meet Mr. West when she worked at Bell Labs, where he'd had an internship while in college, that allowed him to invent his microphone. He was very encouraging to her and that encouragement gave her a respect and love for him that is shown through this story. A scientist champions another scientist!
I look forward to reading more biographies by her. (My one complaint is that there is no photo of her or the illustrator on the jacket of the book. This is an unfortunate omission. It would add representation for kids to see that a Black female scientist and illustrator brought this story to life.)
Capturing the curiosity that sparked Jim West’s becoming a scientist who invented and patented a microphone with a clear tone and the ability to be miniaturized that is in use in dozens of applications around the world, SPARK is an inspiring book to share with children.
Ainissa Ramirez shares Mr. West’s wonder and willingness, as a child, to take things apart to figure out how they work and try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to put them back together. She shows his mischievous shenanigans that literally shock him but don’t deter him. He has the internal determination that has him go to college to study science without financial support from his family.
The illustrations by Setor Fiadzigbey are perfectly aligned to the story and elevate this book. The supplemental material at the end of the book are very informative, well-researched and are sure to make any reader delve further into Mr. West’s life (and provides an ample list of articles and interviews with him) as well as the path to invention of his and previous microphones.
Ms. Ramirez was blessed to actually meet Mr. West when she worked at Bell Labs, where he'd had an internship while in college, that allowed him to invent his microphone. He was very encouraging to her and that encouragement gave her a respect and love for him that is shown through this story. A scientist champions another scientist!
I look forward to reading more biographies by her. (My one complaint is that there is no photo of her or the illustrator on the jacket of the book. This is an unfortunate omission. It would add representation for kids to see that a Black female scientist and illustrator brought this story to life.)
December 6, 2025
This picture book biography tells the story of Jim West, starting with his childhood in Virginia (taking apart every machine he could lay his hands on) to his success at Bell Labs, where he patented several microphones. As a Black boy born in 1931, Jim encountered parental resistance when he announced he wanted to pursue a technology career – both had personal experience with the racist barriers faced by African-Americans in this field. But the tenacity and resourcefulness he’d displayed as a child (amusingly covered through several anecdotes in the text) propelled him to college and into his dream job. Detailed and lengthy text explains how West progressed at Bell from troubleshooting headphones to designing a revolutionary microphone that didn’t need to be connected to a power source. Fiadzigbey’s digital illustrations cleverly mimic superhero comics from the 50s and 60s, with characters who resemble dashing action figures, motion lines as Jim listens to sound, and bold onomatopoeia in balloon letters (“BEEEP!” when he’s wearing headphones or “ZAAAAP!” when he gets shocked during a childhood experiment). Ramirez supplies significant back matter including an author’s note about her personal encounter with West, a detailed essay about his life, a timeline of information on the development of the microphone, and resources for further reading or watching. This biography is at its best when portraying West as a curious child and highlighting his persistence and brilliance as he experiments and refines his invention despite numerous setbacks. Link to complete review: https://ysbookreviews.wordpress.com/2...
September 5, 2025
The story of Jim West’s invention of the foil-electret microphone is a tale of perseverance and untamable curiosity. Jim’s constant tinkering as a child was a source of frustration to his family, but like so many kids, Jim felt compelled to understand why things worked the way they did. Jim’s curiosity led him to a deep understanding of the mechanics of electricity, sound, and materials, which enabled him to piece together concepts from different fields in inventive ways. In today’s world, where fitting in can feel like a priority, the story of Jim’s unstoppable curiosity inspires us all to be willing to stand out and ask why.
Ainissa Ramirez is a powerhouse of engineering knowledge with a unique ability to explain technical mechanisms with simplicity and clarity. Her writing offers an uncommon pairing of technical concepts with lyrical prose. For example, Ainissa’s description of the “skyline of vacuum tubes” that Jim found inside an old radio encourages readers to think about both the function and form of objects, as Jim did.
Illustrator Setor Fiadzigbey blends a modern comic style and a rustic sepia palette in his artwork with electrifying results. Setor’s art gives a feeling of time and place but also conveys the power of “shocking” events.
Spark will ignite curiosity in young minds and is perfect for home reading as well as elementary school libraries and classrooms.
Ainissa Ramirez is a powerhouse of engineering knowledge with a unique ability to explain technical mechanisms with simplicity and clarity. Her writing offers an uncommon pairing of technical concepts with lyrical prose. For example, Ainissa’s description of the “skyline of vacuum tubes” that Jim found inside an old radio encourages readers to think about both the function and form of objects, as Jim did.
Illustrator Setor Fiadzigbey blends a modern comic style and a rustic sepia palette in his artwork with electrifying results. Setor’s art gives a feeling of time and place but also conveys the power of “shocking” events.
Spark will ignite curiosity in young minds and is perfect for home reading as well as elementary school libraries and classrooms.
September 7, 2025
In young Jim West’s life, everything inspired curiosity, and nothing was exempt from his attempts at reverse engineering. One question led to another and ultimately to his desire to study physics. Against society’s prejudices and even his parents’ wishes, he enrolled in college in Philadelphia. But it was his summer job that led to his eventual acceptance into the science community. Bell Labs became his playground where he was encouraged to take apart, study, tinker, research, and invent. The result, better headphones and the microphone that changed the way we all communicate. In this debut picture book from Ainissa Ramirez, a physical materials scientist and author of 2020’s The Alchemy of Us, we learn about this young African American’s refusal to be pushed aside and his drive to get answers. Setor Fiadzigbey’s realistic, warm palette adds excitement and explosiveness to each spread, befitting such a tale. MIT Press will be publishing more books on unknown African American inventors and scientists, and I know they will all be as spark-filled as this one.
October 19, 2025
This is an absolutely fascinating kid's biographic book about a little know scientist. It also demonstrates the ingenuity and perseverance of a young black kid whose curiosity led him from "first spark" (literally) to becoming an icon of invention. His story parallels, to some degree, the space exploration mathematicians "Hidden Figures" venture into the working world of black scientists.
Jim West's story is well written and illustrated for the young reader and will hopefully instill a sense of inventiveness and discovery in another young person.
I encourage the inclusion of this book in school libraries everywhere. Also, parents should seek out a copy for their own child in order to encourage them to venture forward with their own inquisitiveness.
I received a complimentary copy to facilitate a review. Opinions are mine, alone and are freely given.
Jim West's story is well written and illustrated for the young reader and will hopefully instill a sense of inventiveness and discovery in another young person.
I encourage the inclusion of this book in school libraries everywhere. Also, parents should seek out a copy for their own child in order to encourage them to venture forward with their own inquisitiveness.
I received a complimentary copy to facilitate a review. Opinions are mine, alone and are freely given.
February 1, 2026
I love that this is the first book in a new Black Innovators series because I learned so much about a Black inventor I'd never heard of before. Written by a Black scientist who knows Jim West, this was a very interesting biography that begins in Jim West's childhood. It features the natural curiosity of a child destined to be a future inventor and scientist. He is into figuring out how things work, problem solving and experimenting. There is also a connection to the Hidden Figures because it mother was a mathematician at NASA.
Thank you @mitkidspress @candlewickpress for the gifted copy!
I love that this is the first book in a new Black Innovators series because I learned so much about a Black inventor I'd never heard of before. Written by a Black scientist who knows Jim West, this was a very interesting biography that begins in Jim West's childhood. It features the natural curiosity of a child destined to be a future inventor and scientist. He is into figuring out how things work, problem solving and experimenting. There is also a connection to the Hidden Figures because it mother was a mathematician at NASA.
Thank you @mitkidspress @candlewickpress for the gifted copy!
September 3, 2025
My son and I read this book and both adored it. The story is fascinating and not one I heard before. It unfolds like an exploration, and the illustrations are fantastic. The book transported us and we learned a great deal along the way. I highly recommend it.
December 2, 2025
This is a fascinating and inspiring story that will captivate kids and grown-ups alike! It would make a great addition to any home or classroom library. Highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews