Telephones

School Library Journal

Gr 4-7-The history of each invention is interspersed with two-page biographical sketches of inventors or practitioners and complemented by numerous photos and reproductions and colored sidebars of "Amazing Facts." In both books, the roots and early development of the technologies are given in some detail, but as the discussion nears the present and the story becomes more complicated, the texts become less organized and less complete. In Photography, Holland profiles five photographers along with inventors George Eastman and William Henry Fox Talbot. It is for slightly younger readers than Bradley Steffens's Photography (Lucent, 1991). Telephones mainly follows the history of the Bell System, complaining about its monopoly without noticing how thoroughly it was regulated or how Bell set the standard for telephone service. Here the six profiles are all of inventors, with some attention given to how the patenting process affected who is remembered and who made money. This title is more detailed than Jeanne and Robert Bendick's breezy Eureka! It's a Telephone! (Millbrook, 1993), which mentions inventors only in headline form.Margaret Chatham, Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library of Fairfax County Library System, VA