Press Kit–
- full resolution book cover
- full resolution author headshot
- and the press release.
Educators
- Download the free WOOD, WIRE, WINGS educator’s guide (by Marcie Colleen) here.
- Check out this Engineering Design Activity based on the book.
- Have your students share their airplane designs via the FlipGrid WOOD, WIRE, WINGS Inventor Club.
- Follow in my footsteps. Have your students conduct their own primary source research with help from this blog post by librarian Tom Bober on the American Association of School Librarians KnowledgeQuest Blog.
- WWW Primary Source Set (handout for NCTE 2020 talk, Puzzling Together the Truth)
- Check out this Pinterest board for teachers and homeschoolers
Awards for WOOD, WIRE, WINGS:
- CBC/NSTA Best STEM Book for K-12
- CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Book (2021)
- A Might Girl Best Book for Elementary Students (2020)
- 2021 Bank Street College Best Book for Ages 5 to 9
About the Book
By Kirsten W. Larson
Illustrated by Tracy Subisak
Calkins Creek
ISBN:978-1629799384
Ages: 7 to 10
Pub date: Feb. 25, 2020
BUY NOW Indiebound Amazon Barnes & Noble
This riveting nonfiction picture book biography explores both the failures and successes of self-taught engineer Emma Lilian Todd as she tackles one of the greatest challenges of the early 1900s: designing an airplane.
Emma Lilian Todd’s mind was always soaring–she loved to solve problems. Lilian tinkered and fiddled with all sorts of objects, turning dreams into useful inventions. As a child, she took apart and reassembled clocks to figure out how they worked. As an adult, typing up patents at the U.S. Patent Office, Lilian built the inventions in her mind, including many designs for flying machines. However, they all seemed too impractical. Lilian knew she could design one that worked. She took inspiration from both nature and her many failures, driving herself to perfect the design that would eventually successfully fly. Illustrator Tracy Subisak‘s art brings to life author Kirsten W. Larson’s story of this little-known but important engineer.