Steve Jobs

School Library Journal

Gr 4–6—This worshipful entry in the series gives the late, great entrepreneur's career a once-over so shallow that it never even mentions his birth parents, his formative sojourn to India, or Apple's iCloud. Focusing less on Jobs's personal life than on his public triumphs, the author points approvingly to his subject's often abrasive intensity, his maniacal fussiness about details, and his brilliant business strategy of turning Apple into a brand as keys to his string of uncommon successes. Notable associates, such as Steve Wozniak and Apple's design guru Jonathan Ive, do receive nods for their contributions, and Jobs's less-than-stellar experience with his NeXT start-up also gets brief attention. Ending with a simplistic recipe for entrepreneurial excellence (have a better idea, take chances, keep going), this mix of small color photos interspersed with sound-bite quotes and well-separated paragraphs of short-sentenced narrative is capped with a multimedia resource list and suggested research topics. It offers standard assignment information but little beyond the news of Jobs's demise that can't be drawn from older biographies, or in more specific detail in Karen Blumenthal's perceptive Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different (Feiwel & Friends, 2012).—John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library

Children's Literature - Sue Poduska

Part of the series "Titans of Business," this could be a good introduction for kids fascinated by the figure of Steve Jobs. This is not so much a biography as a how-to for being in business and an entrepreneurial genius. All you need are some ideas no one else has ever tried and the nerve to put everything on the line several times. Along the way, you made need some important people to take a chance on you. This is not to discount Jobs' accomplishments or the author's account of them. Jobs was amazing and the world would be very different had he not existed, and it's important that kids learn about this. The approach was a little dry and artificially segmented, but the book does capture some of the excitement of Jobs' life. The reader is left wishing Jobs had lived longer and developed more ideas. The numerous photos, table of contents, index, glossary, and find-out-more section make this a good reference and place to start learning about Jobs. Reviewer: Sue Poduska