Awesome Achievers in Technology, by Alan Katz/Illustrated by Chris Judge, (Aug. 2019, Running Press), $11.99, ISBN: 9780762463367
Ages 8-12
Kids have heard of the big names in Technology: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and, lord knows, Markus Persson (also known as Notch; Minecraft’s creator). But have they heard of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the particle physicist who invented the World Wide Web as a way to share information with other scientists? Or Marie Van Brittan Brown, the nurse from Queens who devised the first closed circuit TV system, in conjunction with her engineer husband? Awesome Achievers in Technology is a series of short bios on some of the lesser-heralded names in technology. The book is part biography compilation, part wacky facts and silly stories, and a sprinkling of dad jokes. There are 12 profiles and 13 biographies – Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus, the developers who created Siri, are included together – with black and white illustrations throughout. There are fun asides, including a “Get the couch potato back where he belongs” maze, remote control pop quiz, and wacky poems and stories from Katz’s memories.
All in all, a fun addition to biography shelves, and a good way to introduce kids to even more figures in STEM history. Awesome Achievers is going to be an ongoing series, with Awesome Achievers in Science hitting shelves on the same day as Awesome Achievers in Technology.
Display these with David Stabler’s Kid series (Kid Scientists, Kid Artists, and others). Good bio compilations are fun to work with in programming, too; start up a scavenger hunt and print up random facts to put around the room for kids to find.
