Review by Booklist Review
As a child, Leo Fender enjoyed tinkering with gadgets, and in his teens, his fascination with electrical and electronic technology led him to build his own crystal radio and repair his friends' radios. He learned accounting in college, but job prospects were few after the Great Depression took hold. Fender turned his hobby into a business, repairing radios, toasters, and even musical instruments. Confident that he could design a better electric guitar, he worked with local musicians and started a company that produced sturdy, versatile, affordable instruments that produced less feedback than previous guitars. While Fender's name may be unfamiliar to many kids, his life story is intriguing, and Mahin does it justice in the book's well-focused text. Further information (including the fact that Fender's iconic Telecaster model has been in continuous production since 1951) appears in the appended biographical note. Salerno's lively, digitally enhanced drawings help viewers imagine the changing twentieth-century settings, while depicting Fender in action throughout his life. This appealing picture-book biography introduces a nonmusician who made a significant contribution to American music.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This engrossing biography follows Leo Fender (1909--1991), who loves tinkering so much that he runs a radio repair business in high school and, following the loss of his accountant job during the Great Depression, establishes an electronics repair shop in California. Discovering that the newly invented electric guitars are "easy to break and hard to fix," Fender decides to make his own and, though he's not a musician, invents the iconic solid-body electric guitar. Mahin employs repetition, alliteration, and wordplay: "Western swing bands had cowboyed their way across the country and taken over the Los Angeles area." Salerno's multimedia illustrations, arranged and colored digitally, have a detailed, appealingly sketched vintage aesthetic. Young inventors in particular will find this well-paced account absorbing, though anyone with passions to pursue will find Fender's mettle inspiring. Back matter includes an author's note with additional biographical information, a bibliography, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. Ages 5--9. (Aug.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2--5--Mahin and Salerno present the life of Leo Fender, the fix-it man who revolutionized the solid-body guitar and built an empire of affordable musical equipment. Leo's story begins in the early 20th century on his family farm, where he explored his love of building and fixing machinery. After straying from a traditional career path during the Depression, he opened a repair shop where he not only fixed instruments but built them. From musicians' feedback (and their desire for less feedback when playing amplified hollow bodies), he developed what is now the standard in rock music: the solid-body electric guitar. This wasn't without trial and error, and in his perseverance Fender clearly demonstrated STEAM habits of mind. This biography is well researched and masterfully told. Children will enjoy reading about Fender's unusual journey, especially with the clever tidbits, peculiar vocabulary, and subtle alliteration that make Mahin a fantastic storyteller. Salerno's classic Americana illustrations in crayons, ink, gouache, and pastel bring to mind illustrative versions of Norman Rockwell stills, with postures that show as much as the facial expressions. Leo is white, with a mop of curly brown hair and round glasses. Inner workings of the instruments and machinery are finely detailed, and blueprint drawings make up the endpapers. VERDICT While Fender may not be a household name, his story will inspire future musicians and inventors. Recommended for children's biography collections, especially those seeking to incorporate the arts into STEAM. Compare with Kim Tomsic's Guitar Genius, the story of Fender's contemporary, Les Paul.--Clara Hendricks, Cambridge P.L., MA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
How did the electric guitar come to be? Few would guess that the inventor of the mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar couldn't even play. But what inventor Leo Fender excelled at was creating prototypes, collecting feedback, experimenting, refining, and improving. From childhood, he was interested in how things worked and how to fix what was broken, tinkering with radios and even finding a way to improve his vision when he lost the use of an eye. His parents didn't see a future in such work, however, so he trained as an accountant. When the Great Depression hit, few had a need to keep track of money, but everyone needed to mend broken belongings, so he opened a repair shop. There he became aware of lap steel guitars, and the rest, accompanied by trial and error, is history. This tale of an idiosyncratic man with a curious mind serves as a virtual textbook on the STEM process and shows the value of applied inquiry, open-mindedness, and resilience. Useful for showing connections between different disciplines and how innovation can be implemented, this interesting story, told with energy and accompanied by appealing illustrations of the bespectacled White tinkerer surrounded by his gadgets, traces the history of the electric guitar we know today. An engaging mix of biography, social-emotional skills, the development of a musical instrument, and the STEM process. (author's note, bibliography, further reading, glossary) (Picture book/biography. 5-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
