With a foreword by Gilbert M. Grosvenor, Bell’s great-grandson, Always Inventing features over 70 period photographs and drawings from Bell’s notebooks.
From his first invention at age 11—a tool to clean husks from wheat kernels—to his patent of the hydrofoil 64 years later, Bell was always inventing. Bell was also one of the original founders of the National Geographic Society.
These books are without a doubt the definitive and most entertaining biographies of scientists for young readers. Author and artist Mike Venezia provides hilarious, cartoon-style illustrations to complement his easy-to-read text and full-color reproductions of the scientists’ sketches and notebooks.
It is 1915 and 13-year old William is sent by his mother to spend the summer working with an eccentric inventor – Alexander Graham Bell – and his crew in a tiny Nova Scotia town. They are hard at work designing and building a hydrofoil boat that they hope will help the allies defend themselves from the German U-boats that are sinking ships and threatening coastal towns during the war. William’s mom is hoping that the hard work and close community will keep William, who has developed a taste for gambling and tough ways, out of trouble. But the sleeping village life William thinks he has been sentenced to turns out to be something quite different as the young boy finds himself embroiled in a deadly mystery that is plaguing the hydrofoil and its builders.
