Inventions to Count On: A Celebration of Black Inventors

PreS-K–From “one heater” in a cozy living room to “ten floors” traveled in an elevator, Miroballi attempts to use the traditional counting book format as a vehicle to highlight the work of 10 Black inventors. But there may be little overlap between readers who are old enough to be interested in the inventors and those who are learning to count. Each of the first 10 spreads features a rhyming couplet that pays homage to a single invention. With brief text and full-bleed illustrations of a joyful Black family in a variety of familiar scenes, this section will work well for story hours with toddlers and young preschoolers. However, despite the subtitle, the main section relegates each inventor’s name to a small stripe, with very little information about the invention. The inventions themselves are not always pictured, as in the case of Jan Ernst Matzeliger’s 1883 patent for an automated shoemaking machine, which is reduced to “eight shoes” on four pairs of dancing feet. Lengthy back matter introduces more information about the inventors and their work, which could have been an entire book of its own. This is a starting point for school projects, but the scant biographical information means students will need to consult the additional resources helpfully listed on the final page.