This appealing, inspiring picture-book biography by Chris Barton (Shark vs. Train; The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch), illustrated by Don Tate (Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton), explores the life of Lonnie Johnson, the African American rocket scientist who invented the Super Soaker water gun... by accident.
Lonnie grew up in the 1950s with five siblings "squeezed into their parents' small house in Mobile, Alabama." Forever tinkering with spare parts and junkyard scraps, he made rockets from scratch, and even built his own robot named Linex with jukebox switches and his little sister's walkie-talkie: "Lonnie used a tape recorder to program Linex, and as a bonus the reels looked like eyes." (Linex won first place for Lonnie's team at a 1968 University of Alabama science fair.) Lonnie, "a self-confident, insightful, creative thinker," went to college at Tuskegee Institute, then, as an engineer, worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At NASA, he created a lightweight backup system for the Galileo space probe that photographed Jupiter and its moons.
At home one day, Lonnie was working on a new refrigerator and air-conditioning cooling system, using the faucet in his bathroom sink with a hose, pump and nozzle, when "WHOOSH!"--water sprayed out with such force he decided his contraption "would make a great water gun." He approached toy company after toy company with his invention until finally, he struck gold. Barton's clean, lively prose and Tate's boldly composed, often comical illustrations--including a dramatic gatefold capturing the Super Soaker's mighty trajectory--make Lonnie Johnson's story of passion and persistence whoosh to life. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness