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Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci

Description

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-01-22
Summary: "Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci"

More often than not, Leonardo da Vinci gets put in a box together with Rembrandt, Monet, Michelangelo, Picasso, and Van Gogh. While all of these artists are to be revered and appreciated, many would agree that Leonardo da Vinci far exceeded all their combined talents. He was a true genius, somewhat in the same category as Nikola Tesla. Da Vinci was a real visionary and way beyond his years with his ideas and contraptions, but there was much more to him than that. In //Neo Leo//, author Gene Barretta presents us with da Vinci's other brilliant abilities that are often overlooked. As a follow up to //Now and Ben//, where past and present events were illustrated and compared in opposite pages, //Neo Leo// cleverly shows how da Vinci's dreams--many of which were inspired by his study of nature--foreshadowed modern inventions, offering a window to the future. //Neo Leo// is a wealth of historical information with which kids will surely love to be familiar. Many of us grew up in an era where there was no Internet, and information such as what Barretta presents here could only be found in the most insipid way--perusing library stacks of thick books with crusty pages and gleaning what we could from microscopic fonts in the footnotes of confusing research books. Today's generation is very fortunate to have resources such as this book, which provides them with colorful, vivid, relatable material that will make them eager to learn. The book will inspire them to research other topics to understand da Vinci's genius better; my own daughter had to look up some of the names that appeared in this book like The Wright Brothers, Otto Lilienthal, Thomas Edison, Thomas Paine, and Jacques Cousteau, to name a few. //Neo Leo// is an educational success because the details presented elicit curiosity and a desire to learn more. The author is to be commended for his ability to pull his desired audience back to opening a book and reading through its pages, which is very hard to do since we are in the age of modern technology when our young often prefer gaining knowledge through audio-visual means rather than from printed media. Even the most computer savvy child will be intrigued and inspired by this book. The illustrations are done in a whimsical, yet detailed manner. Remarkable renderings that only a meticulous artist like Barretta could do (like "Mona Lisa" and the hand drawings of da Vinci) are comically strewn all over the pages of this wonderful read. Pay attention to the tidbits as well, because they provide further enlightenment about da Vinci's idiosyncrasies. Make sure you have a mirror on hand to read some of his inscriptions, which you may mistake initially as typographical errors. If you want to make the Renaissance come alive for your children or students, this book is the way to go... and maybe, just maybe, the world would be a much better place with young aspiring //Neo-Leos// in it.


Reviewed by Kaye Cloutman

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-09-05
Summary: "Neo Leo is a great book"

Just as in his earlier book Now and Ben, the author shows with whimsy how the past and present are connected while teaching a bit of history in a fun way.
Adults may learn something too!

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-08-31
Summary: "Da Wild, Da Crazy, Da Vinci (to quote one of the greats)"

Even if you've never felt the slightest inclination to write a non-fiction picture book a day of your life, it's still possible to take a gander at a book, blink twice, and say to yourself, "Now why didn't I think of that?" Today's example: Gene Barretta's newest. When you're an American child you are inundated with a lot of fancy names of folks, most white, many male, and almost all dead. Dead white men predominate and blend together. It's hardest to remember them if they were simply aligned with concepts rather than things. This is why I think that most kids are taught about historical persons who invented or drew things. Inventors and artists make up the bulk of my library's biography section and rarely do the two occupations intersect. By logical extension, then, Leonardo de Vinci should by rights be the most memorable man kids are taught about in school. And while there are some great Leonardo bios for youngsters out there (Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer by Robert Byrd, Leonardo da Vinci by Diane Stanley, Leonardo da Vinci by Kathleen Krull, etc.) when it comes to making the man pertinent to kids today I can't think of a smarter book than Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci. Read the concept, page through the book, and take in every last the word. Your conclusion? If you're a kid it might be that Leonardo was one heckuva genius. If you're an adult, it might be, "Now why didn't I think of that?"

We all know that Leonardo was a fan of sketching ideas for inventions that were possible, but could not be created during his time for one reason or another. So were they just silly ideas or was there some merit to them? Gene Barretta singles out at least fifteen of Leonardo's ideas and sketches, then pairs them with the inventions that would come later on down the road. The "Neo" of each two page spread is the inventor who created the invention that "Leo" (on the opposite page) surmised long ago. For example, 1891's Otto Lillienthal and his first successful hang glider is paired with Leonardo's thoughts about gliders inspired by watching leaves drift through the air. Everything from the helicopter to the aqualung to the automatic rotisserie are displayed. In the end we see some particularly new and contemporary inventions that are specifically based on Leonardo's calculations. A Bibliography at the conclusion rounds out the text.

It's not as if Barretta didn't do this kind of book before, of course. Prior to publishing Neo Leo he produced the amusing, Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin, cool as he is, isn't Leonardo. He didn't anticipate the helicopter, for crying out loud. And while he was many many MANY things, an artist on par with Leonardo's talents wasn't one of them. Barretta's real skill in both Now & Ben and Neo Leo comes in writing biographies about a great man in simple words that aren't too hard for the child who has grasped the finer points of early reading but hasn't quite yet come to terms with full-length chapter books. I've dealt with such kids before and finding them easy reading interesting books on non-fiction scientific topics is rarely easy.

The illustrations may prove a different kind of lure. The images in this book are watercolors on cold-press paper, but the colors are far more vibrant than your average fluffy bunny fare. The Bibliography, back publication page, and bulk of Leonardo's ideas look to be written on a brilliant golden parchment. Characters are colorful and fun without ever becoming too cartoonish. And while it take a little getting used to, I didn't mind the layout. For example, sometimes Barretta will place a later invention before Leonardo's notes, but on the opposite page. This becomes all the more strange when two later inventions (the 1885 automobile and the 1940 robots) correlate to just one page of information that pertains to both on the opposite page. Once you know how to read the book this doesn't become as much of a problem, but I wouldn't necessarily call it intuitive. And generally Barretta's art fits the pages, though there is one scene that is just the strangest imagining of a full-frontal dolphin I have ever seen.

Barretta's art looks simple, but he's a cheeky one. The opening two-page spread of Leonardo looking about and sketching may strike you as just a way of setting Leo within the context of his times. Closer inspection yields a treasure trove of rewards, though. I first noticed the fact that a woman in one of the windows bore no small resemblance to the Mona Lisa. And that cross hatched insert on the building above a window... isn't that a rough approximation of his Vitruvian Man? Suddenly I realized that the whole spread consisted of hidden odes to Leonardo's artistic work. A woman leaning of with a bird upon her back could easily become an angel. There are more too, so for any kid learning about Leonardo it might be fun to have them try and count how many homages they can find on a single spread.

Credit to Barretta, he takes time to also include moments when we're not entirely certain that Leo was the one responsible for one note or another. The bicycle is a good example of this. "While historians agree that it is not his drawing, some think that a pupil drew it after studying a bicycle prototype in Leonardo's workshop. Others say it was drawn as a prank by someone centuries later." I like that the author is honest about this. Some correlations feel more of a stretch than others. Projecting images through a lens does not necessarily beat a straight path to movie projectors, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Of course, it is a little confusing when the "Neo" section doesn't credit the creator of a particular invention while other "Neo"s do. The cooking rotisserie and the locomotive, for example, appear in a "Neo" section without much in the way of explanation, separating them from other parts of the book.

At the beginning of Neo Leo Barretta writes in his Author's Note that Leonardo wrote backwards and no one really knows why. "Some suggest that he wanted to make it difficult for people to read his ideas and steal them. Another theory is that writing backward prevented smudging his ink." Barretta then proceeds to put mirror writing on each page. Initially I found this tiresome, but eventually I came around to the idea. The book's ultimate goal, aside from wanting to inform, of course, is to amuse and entice the child reader. And if that means coercing them into holding up a biography to a mirror every other page, so be it. After all, when I was a kid I loved those Encyclopedia Brown mysteries where you had to hold an image up to a mirror in order to get the answer to a crime.

If a children's work of non-fiction highlights a historical figure's work more than their life, that book tends to be written for older kids. I had a child of eight in my library just the other day desperate for any kind of non-fiction with a technical element that would pique his interest and discuss inventions in some manner. He wanted something interesting, easy enough to read, but with some complex ideas at hand. Had it been on my shelf, Neo Leo would have been my first choice for him. It's the rare non-fiction text with an eye to the younger readers. A great idea for a book, and a truly enjoyable end product. Like no other Leonardo da Vinci title for kids out there today.

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-08-16
Summary: "Discovering stuff I didn't even know"

I did not know da Vinci wrote backwards because he was left-handed and didn't want to smudge the ink. I also didn't know he was the first to dream up airplanes, helicopters, hang gliders and even tanks. It affirms my belief that people like da Vinci, Einstein and Ben Franklin were just not of this earth. Either that or they simply used their brains to the best of their abilities. Gene Baretta's talents are that amazing also (he even writes backwards like da Vinci and challenges us to hold a mirror up to the words to figure them out). I also own Now & Ben and I'd love to share them with my kids' school, but these books are too good to give up. ~ Terri Jones, Temecula, CA.

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-08-04
Summary: "Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children"

Inventor, artist, mathematician and scientist extraordinaire Leonardo da Vinci may have lived more than five hundred years ago, but his legacy still remains all around us. Leonardo's keen intellect, curiosity, and vision led him to develop the plans for numerous inventions that we regularly use today. A powered air-craft, contact lenses, the movie projector, a single span bridge, the double hull of a ship, a helicopter, and many more useful devices and contraptions are all represented in one form or another in Leonardo's scientific notes and papers.

With its clear text and lively illustrations, Gene Barretta's new book brings Leonardo's ingenious ideas to life for young readers. The format of showing images of each original sketch side-by-side with the modern version works extremely well in communicating the depth of Leonardo's interests and foresight. This book makes an excellent vehicle for teaching children about the enormous contributions to society made possible by innovation and creative thinking.