Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life (Snapshots: Images of People and Places in History) - Hardcover

Elizabeth MacLeod has written many children's books, including nine titles in the Snapshots Biography series; numerous titles in the Kids Can Read, Kids Books Of and Kids Can Do It series; Why Do Horses Have Manes?; What Did Dinosaurs Eat?; and Monster Fliers. She lives in Toronto.

This large-format Canadian book introduces Alexander Graham Bell in a series of double-page spreads featuring topics such as the invention of the telephone, Bell's friendship with Helen Keller, his summer home on Cape Breton, and his experiments building airplanes. Although the author's practice of referring to Bell as "AGB" is distracting at first, the text reads well, and the extended captions offer interesting facts, such as: "During AGB's funeral, telephone service in North America was halted for one minute." Illustrations include color photographs of sites, documents, and artifacts as well as period photographs printed in various colors. An engraving-style representation of Bell in varied poses appears on each spread making cartoon-balloon comments. The number of disparate graphic elements on each spread detracts from the book's visual appeal. Compared to Leonard Everett Fisher's recent Alexander Graham Bell, MacLeod's treatment includes more information, but the presentation, verbally and visually, is more disjointed. A time line and an annotated list of Web sites are appended. Not a basic purchase, but a possible choice for libraries seeking additional material on Bell. Carolyn Phelan