Albert Lite: Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner

SCIENTISTS LIKE TO ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS.

And so do kids, and that quality of being able to question the basis of how everything works is the one which gives kids the ability to appreciate what scientists do when they ask "Why?"

And certainly Albert Einstein was not afraid to ask the big "why?" when he searched into the secrets of energy and matter themselves.

Mariela Kleiner's Meet Einstein (Meet Books, 2010) cheerily takes on the challenge of introducing science and its foremost icon, Albert Einstein, to the youngest readers. Of course, her Einstein is not the messy, hairy, and sometimes quirky Albert of history, but the iconic cartoon-cute, lab-coated Einstein, with his shock of unruly white hair and mustache.

Kleiner's text introduces the concept of science and of scientists, those who ask the big questions about everything--what's in the sky, how plants, animals, and the human body live. Although Viviana Garifoli's illustrations are a bit misleading (Einstein probably didn't spend a lot of his adult working life with bubbling beakers, telescopes, or with micrometers, measuring frogs), her Einstein is appealing to children and does portray the breadth of science However, she does concentrate on his investigation of the nature of light itself and of gravity, which Kleiner's text introduces briefly in its role in maintaining the relationship of sun, moon, and planets in the solar system.

ISN'T THAT COOL?

THINK ABOUT EINSTEIN THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.

MAYBE ONE DAY YOU WILL BE A SCIENTIST TOO.

With their final illustration of a youthful scientist, with an Einsteinian shock of hair, author and illustrator tie together the idea of the scientist with children's curiosity about the unknown, the ultimate aim of this book. Meet Einstein providea a focal point for adults to introduce the idea of science and scientists in early childhood education, providing an easily understandable introduction to basic units on light and gravity, and a good way to inspire youngsters to look at the world in a new way.

And for those young students who want to know more about the man himself, a good next step is Don Brown's Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein,, an accessible picture-book biography which takes the preschool and primary student a bit further into the details of Einstein's early life and into the significance of the great issues of his mature work.