Albert Einstein (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Albert Einstein Elizabeth Bush Krull, Kathleen. Albert Einstein; illus. by Boris Kulikov. Viking, 2009 141p. (Giants of Science) ISBN 978-0-670-06332-1 $15.99 R Gr. 5-8 Krull and her Giants of Science return to trample the middle-school science biography competition, this time focusing on the man who became the twentieth-century eponym for genius. With her customary aplomb at airing the foibles of mighty minds, she dashes a couple of Einstein myths (e.g., he wasn't really such a horrible student in his younger days) and revels in the many eccentricities he so generously provided his biographers. That, though, is the easy part. If Krull had a challenge explicating Newtonian physics (in Isaac Newton, BCCB 5/06), one can only imagine the horrors of taking on breakthrough ideas of space and time. Rather than thrashing her way around concepts relatively (no pun intended) few adults comprehend, she gives it a livelier-than-textbook effort, and then assures her audience that they [End Page 203] shouldn't feel too bad if they don't understand it—not many people do. One would think that all visual caricatures of Einstein have already been executed, but Kulikov nonetheless brings energy and imagination to bear on his subject. Einstein and his later-to-be-discarded wife Mileva embrace on a mountaintop, reading physics papers over each other's shoulders; his famously explosive hair whirls out into a vortex of space as he contemplates his alarm clock. Kids (or their teachers) who insist upon a takeaway physics lesson can quote the most concise summary Einstein offered of his theory of relativity: "It's a theory of space and time as far as physics is concerned, which leads to a theory of gravitation." Now do you get it? Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois