Alexander Graham Bell; Marie Curie; Thomas Edison; Michael Faraday

Biographies of suitable role models are always on the wish list of librarians and teachers, and pupils are no doubt grateful for accessible material for project work. Ideally such books should strike a balance between setting out the achievements of the scientist or inventor in questions and offering sufficient personal detail to bring them to life. One can see why the publisher decided upon the interview format for this series. Unfortunately the questions do not go much beyond the 'Where were you born?' and 'What was your greatest inventions? variety, before the text becomes a straightforward narrative. Ganeri writes clearly and directly for the 8 + age group to provide all the salient facts, but it is a pity that there are no quotations or extracts from diaries to enliven the stories. Photographs and contemporary material would also have helped to give a greater sense of immediacy than the somewhat bland washed-out artwork. The four titles here cover scientists and inventors, but the series also includes the usual suspects amongst the cast list (astronaut, aviatrix, explorer).