Gizmo - Hardcover

Barry Varela worked in publishing before moving to Durham, North Carolina, where he became a researcher and writer at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. In 2006 Roaring Brook Press published his first novel for older readers, Palmers Gate.

 

Ed Briant is the author and illustrator of Seven Stories, published by Roaring Brook Press, and A Day at the Beach, and the illustrator of Paper Parade. He was born in England but now lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his wife and two daughters.

Kindergarten-Grade 3–Professor Ludwig von Glick's attempt at creating a perpetual-motion contraption gets out of hand. The machine takes over his house, inside and out, until the City Buildings and Permits Inspector condemns the place. Just as the wrecking ball is about to swing, the Director of the City Contemporary Art Museum arrives and saves the creation: It was a case of art for art's sake. The author is equally professorial as he long-windedly builds a gizmo of words. Adjectives and adverbs dangle from nouns and verbs, hook onto prepositional phrases, and connect with conjunctions: ...sounds of clanging and banging,/and pinging and ringing,/that were not entirely unpleasant,/as well as tingly, tangly twitterings....And the way in which/the device shimmied swervily,/and teetered topsy-turvily,/in a manner that was somehow/both lifelike and robotic,/was oddly hypnotic. The run-on rhymes perfectly describe the out-of-control invention. The cartoon ink-and-watercolor illustrations are equally playful and intricate. Whimsical spreads give detail-oriented readers busily involved notches and nodes,/nubbins and niches to explore. This light and humorous look at gadgetry will be a great introduction to units on inventions and inventors.–Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH
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