Three Cheers for Inventors!

by Marcia Williams

Dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, this latest wonderful offering from Marcia Williams is full of her characteristic humour. Packed with cartoon-strip illustrations and short biographies, it looks at the discoveries of many famous - and not so famous - inventors from around the world, including Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, Thomas Edison, James Watt and many of their predecessors. Three cheers for inventors!

40 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 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

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcia Williams' 'Three Cheers for Inventors' is a highly informative book, illustrated and formated in the style of a graphic novel making complex information accessible to children. With a full page spread for each inventor, this book looks into the life of the inventor and their journey to creating their invention. Each chunk of information is coupled with an image illustrating the text to assist the child in extracting information from what they have read.

I believe this would be good for year 5 and with a variety of inventors, from Thomas Edison to The Wright Brothers this can be used for curriculum support in both history and science. It would help assist in knowledge retrieval skills if used to write about a particular inventor. This would also be a good book for independent reading. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it to be very entertaining whilst effectively building a child's knowledge on inventors.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very colourful and enticing. There’s a mix of long cartoons about standard inventors - Marconi, Edison, etc as well as some pages which wiz’s you through dates of more obscure inventions. The first chocolate bar - Francois Cailler, 1819, the helter-skelter Sophia Barnacle 1907. There are also surrounding birds who make humorous comments and some incredibly ugly, weird tortoises.

[Sascha Roos · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a dyslexia specialist and author myself, I absolutely love Marcia Williams' book. Her approach really encourages my dyslexic students to enjoy reading. This particularly book is very popular as so many inventors are dyslexic themselves!

[Amy]

Non fiction book in cartoon format that tells the story of famous (mostly male) inventors. Would be good for engaging reluctant readers into non-fiction. Children who replicate the format and produce their own comic strips about non-fiction topics.