Inventors : Incredible stories of the world's most ingenious inventions by Robert Winston

cover image

Illus. by Jessamy Hawke. Dorling Kindersley, 2020. ISBN: 9780241412466.
(Age: 8-12) Highly recommended. Inventors looks at over 100 inventors and the wonderful things they have brought to society to improve our lives. Each page details one inventor and tells a little about their lives and how they came to invent what they did to help improve our world. Written a little as short stories, each page contains facts and illustrations to really show the inventions and the impact they had on people's lives.
The book is divided into four major topics - "Making things go"; which covers inventions that impacted transport and travel; "Caring for people" is the next section which includes inventions that help people, cure diseases, help communications and improve lives overall. The next section is all about "Helping at home", inventions which assist us with household tasks or just entertainment. The last chapter is called "Bang! Whizz! Whirr!" and covers a myriad of other inventions that have helped human beings to live in our complex world and made our live easier and safer.
This book is a great resource because it brings the inventors to life for the reader. A class could use the information in this book as a springboard for further investigation into some of the inventors and the lives they led. It contains information about contemporary inventors that are still living, and this is something not done by many other books on this topic in recent years. There is also a list of inventors that were not covered at the back of the book. The glossary and index are well executed. A great resource for every school library. Themes: Inventors, Technology.
Gabrielle Anderson

booktopia