Timeless Thomas: How Thomas Edison Changed Our Lives.

Following his purviews of Ben Franklin (Now & Ben, 2006) and Leonardo da Vinci (Neo Leo, 2009), Barretta applies the same picture-book format to the inventions of Thomas Edison. Left-hand pages show people using modern technology (“Today . . . we can record any sound we like and save it”), while, across the spreads, Barretta reveals the roots found in Edison’s work: “Edison’s tinfoil phonograph was the first device to record sound and play it back.” Barretta covers the expected Edisonian highlights—the telephone, the light bulb, and the battery—alongside other fascinating projects, such as a huge vending machine designed to dole out urban necessities, including coal and produce, or the first movie studio, built on a circular track to allow sunlight to shine through an exposed roof. Chipper cartoon illustrations show a perma-grinning Edison cranking out invention after invention, but Barretta also slyly draws in some of Edison’s employees, who are identified in short concluding biographies, emphasizing that Edison didn’t go it alone. An entertaining, enlightening intro.
— Ian Chipman

A Light Bulb Went On
‘Timeless Thomas,’ by Gene Barretta

By Pamela Paul
Published: July 18, 2012

If you’ve had about enough of your 8-year-old’s experiments — of wiping up food coloring, tossing broken toy parts haphazardly realigned, and mopping up the pungent vestiges of a vinegar and baking soda volcano — then crack open Gene Barretta’s new biography of Thomas Edison. “Thomas Alva Edison began experimenting when he was just a boy,” the author-illustrator begins brightly, adding, for those who might doubt the capacity of boys: “That’s right.” And nobody complained about the mess.

As Barretta makes clear in “Timeless Thomas,” Edison also made mistakes and suffered his share of failure. (Here the finger is gently pointed at children who give up too easily.) But this accessible and informative account, a worthy successor to Barretta’s other men-and-ideas books (“Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin,” “Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci”), is mostly about Edison’s many great successes and their enduring presence in everyone’s, including children’s, lives today.
“Timeless Thomas” is, in fact, almost entirely devoted to a series of opposing pages showing, on the one side, familiar modern technologies under the heading “Present Day” and, under ”Edison’s Lab” on the other, how Edison made what he did.
Thanks to these adroit renderings, what could seem creaky 100-plus-year-old “Eureka!”s become relevant to young readers accustomed to instantaneous technology upgrades available on their iPhones.
The “Edison’s Lab” pages also effectively explain, through simple diagrams, how some of Edison’s inventions actually worked. (This reader, at least, understood the basic concept of the phonograph for the first time, um, ever.) More obscure inventions are also introduced and explained. Did you know, for example, that Edison invented the electric pen, a forerunner to both the photocopier and the tattoo needle? (Maybe children don’t need to see this one.)
What the book lacks is some background information. It would be helpful to know how he came up with each invention. And the dates of each might appear along with the illustration instead of being confined to a couple of pages in the back. The narrative doesn’t actually tell us when Edison was born.
At the same time, Barretta’s approach minimizes the clutter, and his overall organization (by invention rather than life event), makes the book especially user-friendly for young readers, to whom the dates won’t mean much anyway. The lively illustrations, with spots of humor, help bring the more technical material down to child’s-eye level. An especially nice touch is an endnote on Edison’s employees, showing that even great minds benefit from collaboration, or from little helping hands.

Gr 4-7–Distinctive cartoon illustrations infused with contemporary warmth and 21st-century humor compare electronic products used by contemporary youth on one side of the page to inventions developed in Thomas Edison’s research labs and patented by him on the other. Boys recording music made with an electric guitar and keyboard are juxtaposed with Edison’s tinfoil phonograph. A boy listening to his sound mixer, a girl with a multi CD player, and a girl listening to her iPod are compared to dictation machines and the first talking doll. A boy making photocopies of his face is compared to Edison’s electric pen. Modern moviemaking is linked to Edison’s Kinetograph, the first movie camera, the Kinetoscope for viewing images, and the Kinetephone for projecting sounds with images. Edison’s discovery of radio waves, development of telegraph technology, and a useful light bulb with a community-wide power system are showcased. This will be a useful tool to introduce history and inventions to reluctant readers or students as the book stays tightly focused on Edison’s work rather than on his personal life. Those looking for more biographical information about the scientist can try David Adler’s A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison (Holiday House, 1996) or Melvin and Gilda Berger’s What Makes the Light Bright, Thomas Edison? (Scholastic, 2007).–Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI

Timeless Thomas: How Thomas Edison Changed Our Lives
Gene Barretta. Holt/Ottaviano, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-8050-9108-3
Following his picture-book biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, Barretta introduces Thomas Edison to young readers. Edison (1847–1931), portrayed as a twinkly-eyed gentleman, busily develops his inventions in his New Jersey laboratories. In side-by-side scenes, present-day children and adults enjoy modern technologies (a tattoo gun, an MP3 player, a movie), while opposite, their antecedents (the electric pen, the phonograph, the Kinetoscope) are discussed. Barretta’s warm and funny watercolors create an inviting portrait of an influential man: “So every time you turn on a light, think of Thomas Edison and remember everything he gave us.” Endnotes profile Edison’s employees and offer trivia and additional resources. Ages 8–12. Agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words. (July)