Katie Mazeika

First sentence: Beulah Louise Henry was frustrated. Again. Scritch...scratch...erase! Beulah had a hunch, a new idea for an invention. She could see it clearly in her mind, and she desperately wanted to draw it in perfect detail. But no matter how precise the image in her head was, the drawing on her slate was a mess.

Premise/plot: Picture book biography of Beulah Louise Henry. Chances are you've never heard of her, I certainly hadn't. But she was a MASTER inventor earning the nickname "Lady Edison." The back matter elaborates just how many patents she had and some of her inventions. (To name a few, she invented dollies that open and shut their eyes and gave dolls voice boxes. But that's just the smallest fraction of what she thought up.)

My thoughts: I learned so much from reading this one. I love to learn from children's books. I do. Sometimes I'm familiar with a subject, sometimes it's completely new. This falls into the completely new category. But if someone wanted to do a historic take on Shark Tank as an educational program, she'd keep popping up and making appearances. This does make me curious how many hundreds--if not thousands--of 'untold' stories there are out there.… (more)