On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne (review)

“Little Albert was so different; was there something wrong?” It’s understandable that Albert Einstein’s parents would be more inclined to worry about a child who barely talked at three than to predict he would become a game-changing physicist. Here Berne offers a bare bones outline of Einstein’s journey from wonder-struck child to world-renowned genius, emphasizing for a young audience that his eccentric work habits belied his intellectual prowess. The actual content of Einstein’s work, however, is condensed to little more than suggestion: “Albert thought about very, very big things. Like the size and shape of the entire universe. He thought about very, very small things. Like what goes on inside the atoms that everything is made of.” The substance of the subject is wispy, but the visual presentation is utterly charming. Wiry ink outlines dabbed with watercolor fill portray the great man in affectionate caricature, and slightly oversized font parceled sparingly against grainy, unbleached paper background results in an exceptionally warm, clean layout. While this title is unlikely to advance primary-schoolers’ understanding of quantum physics, it should at least nurture name recognition and perhaps lure readers into Don Brown’s weightier picture book Odd Boy Out (BCCB 10/04) a year or two down the road.