INVENTIONS TO COUNT ON

Rhymed salutes to 10 common creations patented by Black inventors.

Young audiences will recognize at least some of the inventions Miroballi celebrates, such as automatic elevator doors and ice cream scoops with built-in scrapers, but their inventors’ names are shuffled off here to narrow, easy-to-miss vertical sidebars, and the single descriptive couplet she provides for each entry is only a little skimpier than the terse paragraphs of explanation at the end. Cloud doesn’t do much to fill in the details; scenes of an extended Black family engaged in domestic tasks and gathering for a birthday party add a warm, homey atmosphere, but except for that scoop (shown in use at an ice cream parlor), the original inventions aren't depicted until the endpapers and, in the story itself, are generally represented only by images of modern, very different versions. Still, the author’s closing observation that these men and women are worth celebrating for the way they pressed on in the face of systemic discrimination and other obstacles is well taken, brought home by the nod to Alice H. Parker, who patented a gas-fired home heating system in 1919 but is otherwise so obscure that her thumbnail portrait is just a generic silhouette.

An effective pep talk, but thin on specifics.