Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Katya Czaja's Write. Sketch. Repeat.

My selection is "Eureka!: poems about inventors" written by Joyce Sidman with illustrations by K. Bennett Chavez.

Sidman chronicles  inventors from the moment when an imagined woman first shaped a bowl of clay to Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web.  Written in first person from the inventor's point of view, the sixteen poems take a casual, conversational tone as each inventor shares their thoughts with readers.  Sidman divides her work into four sections that touch upon inventions from the life-altering to the whimsical.

• The Tapistry of the Past: which includes Gutenberg and da Vinci
•  The Age of Invention: From French balloonists of the 1700s to the first chocolate bar 
•  A Light Interlude: Inventors whose names are synonymous with their work
• Dawn of the Modern Age: The invention of the bra and the Frisbee to Noble Prize-winning scientist Barbara McClintock.

Chavez's portraits are thoughtful counterpoints to the verses.

Biographical notes round out the book.