How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning

A book I chose for the last category is called, “How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning” by Rosalyn Schanzer. This book not only focuses on Franklin’s experiment of electricity using a kite, but lists many ways he contributed to the world through science and more. The story is written in a fun

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format. The author depicts Franklin as a boy who could not help but to play out his curiosity. He wondered about so many things around him and tried to invent improvements for each. When he was a boy he wanted to swim faster, so he made wood paddles. It worked but the wood was too heavy to use on a regular basis. Right before the electricity experiment, Franklin figured out how to save homes from catching on fire from lightning storms, hence the lightning rods still on top of buildings today. The illustrations are great animations as well. They look so playful and free, even though Ben is visualized as an old man. This book is an easy read to learn more about the role Franklin gave as an inquisitive scientist and noble man of society.

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How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning is a humorous biography on Franklin's life as an inventor. Rosalyn Schanzer shows Ben Franklin as a man that did everything and worked to help peoples live their lives better. This book inspires young readers that they can be an inventor at any age and that

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constant experimenting and observing the ways that the world works can make anything a scientific project or experiment. The book would be a good read for readers in 4th grade and up.
The biography starts off telling a little bit about who Franklin was as a person. Schanzer paints Franklin as a man who was involved in lots of different things and started up different organizations to help people. "He was a musician, a printer, a cartoonist, and a world traveler! (Schanzer 2)" Since Franklin was passionate about helping people Schanzer explains the problem that lightning caused an abundance of bad fires during Franklin's time. Ben Franklin started the first fire department to help with this problem. Schanzer goes on to explain about how Franklin started as an inventor and what other inventions he made to make life easier. Franklin started inventing when he was 11 so children realize that even though they are young, they can be still inventors. Ben Franklin experimented on electricity to find out how it works and stole lightning from the sky. This lead to the lightning rod which is one of his most famous inventions. Rosalyn Schanzer added a lot of extra's pertaining to Franklin in this book. The typography is a version of the typeface that Franklin brought to America in the 1740's and on the inside of the cover are parts of Franklin's original drawings which show ideas that he had worked on. The illustrations in this book show Franklin's time period with the way that the people are dressed and styled, the ships and the images of the town that Franklin was in. Also, the illustrations are large and colorful which gives the reader a lot to look at while reading the book. Schanzer also adds "A Note from the Author" on the last page of the book which explains her reasoning for writing mostly about Franklin's inventions in the book and not about his other accomplishments. She also adds more information about Franklin in this note.
Although I think that this book is an excellent source of information for Ben Franklin and his inventions, I felt that Schanzer went between Franklin's inventions and the way that Franklin went about learning about lightning too much. I would have liked for the book to be split up more into 2 parts (his inventions and how he went about stealing the lightning) instead of integrated into each other. The book can be used in a lesson that introduces inventions and inventors.

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Great book about Ben Franklin as a scientist and inventor. Lots of good information.

How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightening gives a young reader an introduction to the life of one of America's most famous and interesting forefathers. While it is true Ben Franklin wore many hats, this book focuses on his life as a scientist and inventor. It is told in story book fashion and is

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beautifully illustrated. The pictures brilliantly compliment the text and are very interesting to look at due to the attention to detail and use of color. The cover of the book would very likely pull a young reader in. It is a picture of Franklin holding a lightening bolt in the sky. The endpages are covered with interesting drawings of some of Franklin's inventions and are courtesy of the American Philosophical Society Library. There is no bibliography, but an interesting Author's Note giving additional historical information about Franklin and some other inventions not mentioned in the book. I would recommend this book to elementary ed teachers as an introduction to Ben Franklin. It is a great way to blur the lines between history and science.

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The book How Ben Franklin stole the lightning by Rosalyn Schnazer is a biography about the life of Benjamin Franklin leading up to the moment when he created the lightning rod. It provides details and insight about Ben Franklin’s life and provides flashbacks to help the reader. This is all to

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achieve the main purpose of the book, which is to inform the reader about Benjamin Franklin’s big invention.
I enjoyed this book for many reasons. The main thing I enjoyed about this book though was the reader involvement. Throughout the whole story the author is trying to get the reader involved and interested in the book, whether this is through having the reader guess or infer what will happen next. An example of this is when the author is discussing a small invention Benjamin made before the lightning rod which also involved a kite, the author stated “You might want to remember later on that Ben always did like kites.” It really helped to keep the readers interest in the story and created more excitement in the story as well.
Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed about this book was the illustrations. The pictures were very detailed and well planned out. They also provide cute humor to the story and describe the story as well. For example when discussing how Benjamin Franklin found weightlifting is good for you and also stating that he was the person who said “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” The illustration provided humor by having a huge apple at the bottom which Benjamin Franklin was weight lifting. Something I found humorous and I feel added some interest to the story.
The final thing I liked about this book was that in the back of the book it provided more information about Benjamin Franklin, whether it was more experiments he did or more about his life. I liked this because the book actually taught me a lot of things I didn’t know about Benjamin Franklin and it was good to have a reference if I wanted to know more, which helped the book to achieve its overall idea of informing the reader about Benjamin Franklin.

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I liked this book for a few reasons. The first reason I liked this book is because the language throughout was descriptive. Each time the book mentioned an invention that Ben Franklin invented it described it detail. For example when the book mentions an invention Franklin made to swim faster it

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explained that it was wood paddles that he attached to his hands and his feet. They then mention how he evolved the invention to move faster by having a kite pull him through the water. The second reason I liked the book was because the author developed the character of Ben Franklin very well. There is great detail about him and what he did during his life. The author mentioned many of the inventions that he came up with and other things that he did such as, start a hospital, free academy, and fire department. The final reason I like this book is the illustrations throughout. Each time an invention was mentioned it showed a picture of it. For example when the book mentions the kite with the key at the end, they have a great image of it so the reader can explicitly see what they mean. The big picture of this book is to teach about all of the great accomplishments of Ben Franklin in his life.

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This biography details how Benjamin Franklin "stole lightning" from the sky so that houses and ships would not catch fire from the lightning. The book starts with talking about some of Ben's earlier scientific breakthroughs as well as his personal history of why he became an inventor. It then went

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on to detail colonial life and the risk of fire due to lightening strikes, so Ben decided to try and figure out a way to prevent this. Before this is detailed, it is first explained that Ben was a born inventor and and found ways to swim faster than anyone else by using kites! He also developed some new inventions for the library, an odometer which counted how far he rode to deliver the mail, and the first clock with a second hand. After all these, he came up with daylight savings times and bifocals so he could see better without having to constantly switch glasses. Ben also invented a stove that could warm up houses quicker and a glass armonica; although some of Benjamin's inventions were for fun, most of them were helpful and he also educated people about health such as "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" and the fact that vitamin C gives people healthy skin and gums and also helps to keep people safe from scurvy. Benjamin then found a fast, warm river route between America and Europe as well as wrote the first weather forecast and figured out that by putting some drops of oil into rough waters, the water become still. As the book goes back to electricity, it talks about how in one European place, the king had "electricians" run electric charges through soldiers and then shocked them so they went to attention faster than ever before. It then talked about small sources of electricity that Ben figured out how to control such as shock through touch or the creation of the "electric spider." Finally, the book goes to Ben stealing lightening and details the way that he did this - through the use of a kite, string, a key, and finally, a silk ribbon. When the kite was hit by lightening, the electricity traveled through the string all the way down until it hit the key and sent a small shock out of it to Ben's hand. After this, Ben was able to create "lightening rods" so that if lightening did strike, it would hit the rod and travel down a cord until it reached the ground so noting caught fire. After the picture book ended, it went on to detail the rest of Ben's life and give a list of all the scientific achievements that he created.

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Fun but imprecise.