Historical Fiction

Now & Ben The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin

By: Gene Barretta

Square Fish: 2008

40 Pages
Historical Fiction

   

     I chose to write about this individual book because it has such wonderful illustrations. I had not seen this book before now and just love it! There are definitely many great educational benefits you could get from this text and share with your class. This book was about Benjamin Franklin and his inventions. For example, Franklin invented the lightning rod, electricity, and even bifocals. In this book it shows how important these inventions are to us now. 

     

     The illustrations in this book are very colorful. The artist used watercolor on paper to achieve this look. There are a lot of cartoon looking characters throughout the book. The pictures are very engaging and humorous. The water colored cartoons show just how Franklin's inventions came to life. The endpapers are filled with sketches of some of the inventions. These endpapers also offer some more of the real biographical information. 

     This book would be appropriate for children from kindergarten until fourth grade. This would be a great book used for a history project. Students could use this text to learn about some of the inventions Franklin made possible. Students could also use this text to talk about what if these inventions were still not here today? What would the effect on our world be? There would be so many great discussion points. Older students could also talk or write about how the inventions have evolved over time. This book has not won any awards.