   | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 04/01/2018 Gr 7–10—Part personal memoir, part historic study of inventions and biography, and part DIY instructions, this book packs in a lot. The result is an account of inventions and inventors and the thinking that motivates innovation. In Grandin's introduction, she states, "My road to becoming an inventor and animal scientist began in boarding school." She goes on to offer a detailed account of her isolated childhood and eventual diagnosis of autism, which serves as a backdrop for her later achievements. The chapters are organized by invention materials and types, such as "Levers and Pulleys" and "Optical Illusions," but each chapter contains such a vast amount of information and text that it is daunting. The author first states a personal account of her interests in the topic and then explains the historical context, including inventor biographies and a concluding project. There are not a tremendous amount of organizational tools, so accessing the information piece by piece is difficult. In addition, the very specific details of each story and history, and some of the diagrams, make the intended audience hard to determine. However, scientifically minded readers will find each section informative. VERDICT Consider for libraries where maker spaces are popular.—Patricia Feriano, Montgomery County Public Schools, MD - Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 04/15/2018 Grandin, renowned as a scientist, author, and adult with autism, has created a miscellany in which she claims to share “the soul of invention.” To do this, she integrates anecdotes from her life as a curious tinkerer with stories of important inventions and activities, such as pairing the history of paper and scissors with instructions for making paper snowflakes. Organized by broad categories (“Things Made of Wood,” “Things That Fly,” etc.), the book touches on ideas such as the Fibonacci sequence and optical illusions, encourages creativity by making a water bomb or a plant stand, and provides short background on additional inventions from crayons to hydraulic jacks. Famous inventors are profiled, from Gutenberg to the Wright brothers, who she thinks “might today be diagnosed as somewhere on the autism or Asperger’s spectrum.” To all of that, she tosses in references to the Flying Nun and golf ball dimples. The design is dull, dated, and distant, with reproductions of patents and portraits of dead white men, but the myriad topics and personal text are certainly mind-expanding. - Copyright 2018 Booklist. Loading...
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