Odd Boy Out - Young Albert Einstein by: Don Brown

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Copyright Date: 2004

Number of Pages: 32

Reading Level: 4-8

Summary:

Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. His family fears that his head is too big and that he is too fat.. The doctor said he was fine, although he did have a big head. It took him a long time to start talking which worried his family but when he finally started he was clever and sharp. As he got older, he was cruel to his sister, he would throw things at her and hit her on the head, he scared away his tutor and she never returned again. He liked to build card houses and he when he started doing something he would focus entirely on that. He was always curious and he always wanted to know how the world worked around him. Their family moved to Munich where his parents let him wander the streets alone in order to teach him to be independent - he was four. When school started, he wanted nothing to do with the sports the other boys were playing, and while soldiers fascinated most boys, they disturbed Albert. To top it all off he was Jewish, and the other boys made fun of him for that. He would do well in some school subjects but he ignored that ones he didn't like. All his teachers thought he might be dull-witted. He got good grades. His parents had a medical student live with them for a while and he gave Albert a math book. Albert worked through the book by himself and finished after just a few months. He gets another math book, and pretty soon he passed up that medical student in math knowledge. He was witty and sly in school and refused to learn things just so that they were memorized. One teacher told him he would never get anywhere in life. He ignored that prediction. His parents moved to Italy and he followed shortly after. He applied to attend the college but failed the entrance exam, so he finished his high schooling and ended up attending the college. He still preferred to be alone and he didn't have any friends but he didn't mind it. At school he graduates and tries to find a job teaching at a university but ends up working for a patent office. He got married and became a father. He would always be thinking about math, light, time, the world, the universe...Because of him we have E=mc^2, automatic door openers, television, space travel, and atomic energy. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

Who would benefit from reading this book/Who would I recommend this book to?

I think it is good for children to read about the younger lives of famous people especially people like Albert Einstein. I would recommend this to all children so that they can get to know the Albert Einstein not known to many people.

What problems/conflicts could this book potentially cause?

He was mean to his sister, and that could be a potential problem. We don't want kids thinking that just because Einstein was mean to his sister doesn't mean that they can be.

My Reaction:

I thought this was a really cute book. It depicts Einstein in a new light for me. It makes him more human. I find it interesting that even as a young child he knew that school was a place that you go to learn and grow as a human being not just a place that you memorize and regurgitate random information. He was a good student but in his terms.