This little engineer A think-and-do primer

PreS-Gr 1--With a cadence that goes minimally to that of "This little piggy," this book introduces engineers out of real life on the verso: "This little engineer/ hopes we'll visit Planet Mars/ to live and do work there/ among twinkling stars." On the right, children meet, in this case, Gwynn Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX. They also meet Nikola Tesla, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the Latina astronaut and then director of NASA's Johnson Space Center Ellen Ochoa, and a few others. The wooden digital illustrations are not a bar to entry, servicing the text ably. VERDICT The emphasis on women engineers, and especially women of color, makes this a delightful starter kit for every lap-sized budding child with access to LEGO sets or Tinker Toys.

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. (11 additional engineers, an explanation of different engineering specialties) (Board book. 4-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.