Beginning with Leonardo da Vinci’s notes and illustrations, Neo Leo presents a clever look at the amazing artist, inventor, engineer, and scientist. His eclectic interests and multifaceted talents will impress upon readers the far-sighted vision of the greatest Renaissance scientist. His original ideas inspired some of today’s most useful inventions, ranging from contact lenses and tanks to hang gliders and helicopters.

The book’s emphasis on da Vinci’s notes could be used to introduce journaling to students as they emulate the process of invention. The bibliography will help elementary readers learn more about da Vinci. This light-hearted look at the process of invention earned the book a place among the NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Books for 2010.

Even if you’ve never felt the slightest inclination to write a non-fiction picture book a day of your life, it’s still possible to take a gander at a book, blink twice, and say to yourself, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Today’s example: Gene Barretta’s newest. When you’re an American child you are inundated with a lot of fancy names of folks, most white, many male, and almost all dead. Dead white men predominate and blend together. It’s hardest to remember them if they were simply aligned with concepts rather than things. This is why I think that most kids are taught about historical persons who invented or drew things. Inventors and artists make up the bulk of my library’s biography section and rarely do the two occupations intersect. By logical extension, then, Leonardo de Vinci should by rights be the most memorable man kids are taught about in school. And while there are some great Leonardo bios for youngsters out there (Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer by Robert Byrd, Leonardo da Vinci by Diane Stanley, Leonardo da Vinci by Kathleen Krull, etc.) when it comes to making the man pertinent to kids today I can’t think of a smarter book than Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci. Read the concept, page through the book, and take in every last the word. Your conclusion? If you’re a kid it might be that Leonardo was one heckuva genius. If you’re an adult, it might be, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” We all know that Leonardo was a fan of sketching ideas for inventions that were possible, but could not be created during his time for one reason or another. So were they just silly ideas or was there some merit to them? Gene Barretta singles out at least fifteen of Leonardo’s ideas and sketches, then pairs them with the inventions that would come later on down the road. The “Neo” of each two page spread is the inventor who created the invention that “Leo” (on the opposite page) surmised long ago. For example, 1891’s Otto Lillienthal and his first successful hang glider is paired with Leonardo’s thoughts about gliders inspired by watching leaves drift through the air. Everything from the helicopter to the aqualung to the automatic rotisserie are displayed. In the end we see some particularly new and contemporary inventions that are specifically based on Leonardo’s calculations. A Bibliography at the conclusion rounds out the text.

It’s not as if Barretta didn’t do this kind of book before, of course. Prior to publishing Neo Leo he produced the amusing, Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin, cool as he is, isn’t Leonardo. He didn’t anticipate the helicopter, for crying out loud. And while he was many many MANY things, an artist on par with Leonardo’s talents wasn’t one of them. Barretta’s real skill in both Now & Ben and Neo Leo comes in writing biographies about a great man in simple words that aren’t too hard for the child who has grasped the finer points of early reading but hasn’t quite yet come to terms with full-length chapter books. I’ve dealt with such kids before and finding them easy reading interesting books on non-fiction scientific topics is rarely easy. The illustrations may prove a different kind of lure. The images in this book are watercolors on cold-press paper, but the colors are far more vibrant than your average fluffy bunny fare. The Bibliography, back publication page, and bulk of Leonardo’s ideas look to be written on a brilliant golden parchment. Characters are colorful and fun without ever becoming too cartoonish. And while it take a little getting used to, I didn’t mind the layout. For example, sometimes Barretta will place a later invention before Leonardo’s notes, but on the opposite page. This becomes all the more strange when two later inventions (the 1885 automobile and the 1940 robots) correlate to just one page of information that pertains to both on the opposite page. Once you know how to read the book this doesn’t become as much of a problem, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it intuitive. And generally Barretta’s art fits the pages, though there is one scene that is just the strangest imagining of a full-frontal dolphin I have ever seen.

Barretta’s art looks simple, but he’s a cheeky one. The opening two-page spread of Leonardo looking about and sketching may strike you as just a way of setting Leo within the context of his times. Closer inspection yields a treasure trove of rewards, though. I first noticed the fact that a woman in one of the windows bore no small resemblance to the Mona Lisa. And that cross hatched insert on the building above a window… isn’t that a rough approximation of his Vitruvian Man? Suddenly I realized that the whole spread consisted of hidden odes to Leonardo’s artistic work. A woman leaning of with a bird upon her back could easily become an angel. There are more too, so for any kid learning about Leonardo it might be fun to have them try and count how many homages they can find on a single spread.

Credit to Barretta, he takes time to also include moments when we’re not entirely certain that Leo was the one responsible for one note or another. The bicycle is a good example of this. “While historians agree that it is not his drawing, some think that a pupil drew it after studying a bicycle prototype in Leonardo’s workshop. Others say it was drawn as a prank by someone centuries later.” I like that the author is honest about this. Some correlations feel more of a stretch than others. Projecting images through a lens does not necessarily beat a straight path to movie projectors, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Of course, it is a little confusing when the “Neo” section doesn’t credit the creator of a particular invention while other “Neo”s do. The cooking rotisserie and the locomotive, for example, appear in a “Neo” section without much in the way of explanation, separating them from other parts of the book. At the beginning of Neo Leo Barretta writes in his Author’s Note that Leonardo wrote backwards and no one really knows why. “Some suggest that he wanted to make it difficult for people to read his ideas and steal them. Another theory is that writing backward prevented smudging his ink.” Barretta then proceeds to put mirror writing on each page. Initially I found this tiresome, but eventually I came around to the idea. The book’s ultimate goal, aside from wanting to inform, of course, is to amuse and entice the child reader. And if that means coercing them into holding up a biography to a mirror every other page, so be it. After all, when I was a kid I loved those Encyclopedia Brown mysteries where you had to hold an image up to a mirror in order to get the answer to a crime. If a children’s work of non-fiction highlights a historical figure’s work more than their life, that book tends to be written for older kids. I had a child of eight in my library just the other day desperate for any kind of non-fiction with a technical element that would pique his interest and discuss inventions in some manner. He wanted something interesting, easy enough to read, but with some complex ideas at hand. Had it been on my shelf, Neo Leo would have been my first choice for him. It’s the rare non-fiction text with an eye to the younger readers. A great idea for a book, and a truly enjoyable end product. Like no other Leonardo da Vinci title for kids out there today. On shelves now. Review copy from publisher.

-Elizabeth Bird

Gr 2-5 – Similar in format and style to Now & Ben (Holt, 2006), this book focuses on sketches found in Leonardo’s writings that reveal an understanding of inventions that would not come into being until hundreds of years after the death of this quintessential Renaissance man. Vivid watercolor illustrations depict more than a dozen, including the hang glider, contact lenses, the tank, and robots. Each facing page appears as a sheet of notes revealing Leonardo’s version, which is usually quite similar to the one we know today. Each page of Leonardo’s notes contains a few short lines printed in reverse, and an author’s note explains how a mirror can be used to view this writing style used by the inventor himself. Barretta provides clear information without veering into scientific explanations. Readers who most closely associate Leonardo with the Mona Lisa will be inspired by the breadth of his interests and the genius of his observations. This accessible introduction will inspire children to look closely at the world around them and come up with some creations of their own.

-Lisa Glasscock, Columbine Public Library, Littleton, CO

In a format similar to his Now & Ben (2006), Barretta points out the links between one man’s genius and the development of a varied catalogue of creations. The author acknowledges that many of the ideas mentioned never bore fruit during Leonardo’s lifetime, but drawings and information from his numerous notebooks show that he did indeed posit possible predecessors to such disparate items as parachutes, armored tanks, scuba gear and rotisserie cookers.

The colorful, cartoon-style illustrations show an elderly Leonardo observing the world around him and/or testing his theories on the right side while the left-hand pages reveal the (relatively) modern ideas and inventions to which parallels are being drawn. The pictures also offer sly humor (look for the Mona Lisa enjoying a bowl of spaghetti) and hint at a level of sophistication required from readers. The text likewise challenges the notion that all picture books are for primary grades with a high-level vocabulary and the inclusion of explanatory notes written backwards, just as Leonardo himself wrote. Energetic, engaging and eclectic – just like its subject.

This lively introduction to the visionary ideas of Leonardo Da Vinci uses one side of each spread to portray a modern invention, while re-creations of Leonardo’s original sketches occupy the other, accompanied by a quick scene of the great thinker coming up with his fantastic designs.

Breaking his massive body of work down to bite-size chunks works well, allowing children to visually align the similarities of his prototypes for an airplane, tank, contact lens, or a movie projector with their more modern incarnations mirrored across the fold.

Mirrors play yet another role in this book, as bits of additional information about Leonardo’s sketches are presented in the same backward writing that he used in his diaries.

Barretta’s colorful and comical artwork keeps the scientific subject matter fun, with smiling, apple-cheeked characters populating the pages and a grey-bearded da Vinci scribbling notes while studying the world around him. A fine choice to introduce the famous man, his peerless ideas, and the forward-thinking role of inventors in general.

-Ian Chipman