THIS LITTLE ENGINEER

What can you make?

Little kids with big ideas, imaginations, and aspirations might appreciate this compact book about engineers who accomplished big goals in various fields. Notably, almost all the engineers succinctly profiled herein are women—and, even more notably, women of color, among them Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina astronaut; Sangeeta Bhatia, an Indian American medical nanotechnologist; and Fei-Fei Li, a Chinese American engineer who specializes in artificial intelligence. The profiled male engineers include Apple whiz Steve Wozniak, electricity genius Nikola Tesla, and Gustave Eiffel, builder of his eponymous tower and designer of the “skeleton inside the Statue of Liberty.” Each scientist has one spread devoted to them, introducing “This little engineer” with a jaunty, clever four-line verse that explains the subject’s work in simple terms and offers a cartoonish, smiling, wide-eyed headshot of the scientist. The facing page colorfully depicts the engineer with a tiny body and enlarged head and describes their accomplishment with one or two explanatory sentences. The author manages to engineer an impressive amount of rudimentary information into a small space, though much of this will likely go over many readers’ heads—despite the board-book format, this content is geared to older readers. Additionally, each profile’s opener, “This little engineer,” reminiscent of “This Little Piggy,” is rather twee. Illustrations are vivid, but engineers’ faces generally aren’t individualized. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

This could engineer some future career ambitions.