Electrical Wizard

How Nikola Tesla
Lit Up The World

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Nonfiction Monday Roundup

and also joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Candlewick Press

(pub. 9.10.2013)  40 pages

A True Tale with 
A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Elizabeth Rusch
           and Illustrator: Oliver Dominguez

    

C haracter: NIKOLA TESLA

O verview from the jacket flap: 

"Move over, Thomas Edison! Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla takes center stage in the first-ever picture-book biography of the man responsible for lighting our lives with electricity...

Tesla faced many obstacles along the way, including the great American inventor Thomas Edison, who was a staunch defender of the direct-current electrical system. But Tesla worked tirelessly to proved that AC, not DC, was the wave of the future. He proved it at the Chicago World's Fair and at Niagara Falls - and his proof lives on today in a world transformed by his inventions ..."

T antalizing taste: 

     "The night of Nikola Tesla's birth, lightning zapped, crackled, and flashed overhead. For years after, booming thunder drew the poor Serbian boy to the window of his family's small house. Nikola gazed, mystified, as electrical bolts ricocheted across the sky.
      One evening, when he was three, Nikola stroked his cat, Macak. The cat's fur snapped with tiny sparks. 'What is it?' ...
     'Electricity,' his father explained...
     Enchanted by the sparking halo his hands had conjured, Nikola wondered what other magic he could perform."

and something more: The extensive back matter in Electrical Wizard includes a section called "Tesla vs. Edison: The Rivalry" which not only sets forth the rivalry, but also the harsh treatment Thomas Edison gave to Nikola Tesla. For example, "Though Edison dismissed Tesla's ideas about alternating current, he did hire the young engineer. For a year, Nikola toiled for Edison, often from 10:30 a.m. until five the next morning. Edison said to him, 'I have had many hardworking assistants but you take the cake.'  He promised to pay Tesla $50,000 to improve his direct-current motors. Tesla did, but when he tried to collect his pay, Edison just laughed. 'Tesla, you don't understand our American humor.' Nikola stormed out of Edison's office. The young engineer struggled financially for months, even digging ditches to feed himself."  Later, Edison "strove to squelch" any competition and projects from Tesla. Readers are certainly exposed to a different side of Thomas Edison.

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When The Beat Was Born

DJ Kool Herc and 
the Creation of Hip Hop

This post joins other
kidlit bloggers on the
Nonfiction Monday Roundup

and also joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Roaring Brook Press (MacMillan)

(pub. 8.27.2013)  32 pages

A True Tale with 
A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Laban Carrick Hill
           and Illustrator: Theodore Taylor III

    

C haracter:  DJ Kool Herc

O verview from the jacket flap: 

"DJ Kool Herc lived in the Bronx, where there was a lot of fighting. But he didn't want to fight. He wanted to play music.

DJ Kool Herc had a new way of spinning records. He played the breaks of songs back-to-back so that the music best for dancing could go on and on...

This is the story of DJ Kool Herc. The story of how he came to be a DJ, how kids in his neighborhood stopped fighting in order to break-dance, and how he invented a new kind of music that would change the world.

This is the story of hip hop."

T antalizing taste: 

     "Clive loved music. It didn't matter what kind. Whether it was a wah wah scat of a jiving trumpet, a sorrowful twang of sad voice, or the belting boom of a gospel singer, little Clive loved the way sound thumped and bumped all the way down in his stomach. he loved the way the music made his feet go HIP HIP HOP, HIPPITY HOP."

and something more: In the Author's Note, Laban Carrick Hill writes that in 1980 he had a job that "entailed walking block by block through Harlem and the South Bronx... In the late afternoon, I would approach a corner and hear a loud thumping. The booming would be so deep that it would almost shake the ground... When I came around that corner I saw fifty or so teens dancing some of the most amazing dances I had ever seen. The dances defied gravity and human flexibility. The performances were miraculous feats of physical agility. And they were all done to the beat of records spun by a DJ." As he explained, it was "a youth movement that was the antithesis of gang violence."  Laban Carrick Hill "was so captivated by the music and the dancing that [he] started going to clubs... and heard the story of DJ Kool Herc."  
     

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