How did we know what path our first satellites should take? How did we know how much rocket power it would take to land a man on the moon?
On Christmas Day in 1642, a tiny baby was born in an old rundown farmhouse in England. His mother didn't love him and his father died before the boy turned one. When his mother remarried a few short years later, the boy's stepfather refused to have him in the house. So, his mother sent him away.
Today a tiny notebook that you can fit in the palm of your hand reveals to us his ideas, his understanding of science as he recorded his thoughts in a small journal.
This boy, Isaac, grew up without the love of a family but he had the company of his books and his own wonderful curiosity. In his lifetime he figured out how the universe works. He put it in order for us with his laws and today his work makes it possible for us to dream of going to Mars.
This is the story of the life of Isaac Newton who found himself fascinated by science and particularly the world of alchemy. This is a warm and engaging story of the life of the man known as the father of physics.
176 pages 978-0763670634 Ages 10 and up
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"A surprising true story of Isaac Newton’s boyhood suggests an intellectual development owing as much to magic as science.
Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary’s house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy—a process of chemical reactions that seemed, at the time, to be magical. Mary Losure’s riveting narrative nonfiction account of Isaac’s early life traces his development as a thinker from his childhood, in friendly prose that will capture the attention of today’s budding scientists—as if by magic. Back matter includes an afterword, an author’s note, source notes, a bibliography, and an index."--from the publisher
