54 Books Like The Diamond and the Boy

People are drawn to books when they can see themselves in the characters, even if the characters are very different from them. With this book, I immediately identified with the young Lonnie Johnson, who loved to tinker and could never find enough space for his creative materials! 

In Lonnie’s case, his materials were rocket kits, bolts, screws, and junkyard treasures, so it’s no wonder he grew up to be an engineer and inventor. Kids will be inspired by his abundance of ideas, grit, and determination to solve any challenge that gets in his way!

Picture books are a unique genre because there are really three people who participate in telling the story – the author, the illustrator, and the children who are reading and/or listening. With each page turn, ADA Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine brings us to another time and allows us to become part of that history – a time before computers and other electronic devices proliferated our lives and before women in science were accepted. The lush illustrations and the lyrical text capture my heart each time I read this book, and I love how we get a small peek into the life of the main character’s famous parents, Lord Byron, and Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke.

This non-fiction book about Emma Lilian Todd by Kirsten Williams Larson and illustrated by Tracy Subisak offers an inspiring story about a woman engineer inventing an airplane. The story and illustrations do a fantastic job of showing the real-world process of design thinking, with research and failures along the way. I love the themes of perseverance and the important message that great inventions build upon one another.

Having experienced several eye operations, I really connected with this story about a female African American ophthalmologist who pioneered laser surgery and received a patent for the ingenious device used to perform the delicate procedure of removing cataracts. An important book on so many layers, Patricia's Vision is a mirror for children in marginalized groups to see themselves as successful professionals, a window for other children to observe a diverse person in the role of an inventor and a doctor, and a sliding glass door for all to envision their own endless possibilities. The story also shows how young Patricia Bath grew up with hopes and dreams, and plans of what might be – and it will empower young readers today to build their dreams into reality.

Michael Stanley is an author comprised of two writers: Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Their novels, set in Botswana and Zimbabwe, and featuring the enigmatic, Detective Kubu, have enjoyed much success in the UK and the US. Their latest story acts as a prequel, featuring Kubu just as he leaves university and joins Botswana’s CID. As a first case, Kubu is confronted with the theft of millions of dollars of diamonds, the execution of the robbers, a conniving witch doctor, and his son, and a case with international ramifications. Dark and thrilling.

Few figures better embody the intersection of innovation and revolutionary radicalism than the brilliant theologian, political theorist, and natural philosopher, Joseph Priestley, the subject of Johnson’s delightful and informative book. An ordained minister, Priestley abandoned the teachings of the Church of England for Unitarianism, a move that banished him to the theological sidelines. Priestley’s brilliance was not limited to the theological and, as he moved to the outer fringes of British religious life, he moved to the red-hot center of the nation’s scientific life, gaining election to the esteemed Royal Society. Among Priestley’s many contributions to the chemical sciences was to identify components parts of air, including the elemental oxygen. As he pursued far-reaching truths in the natural sciences, Priestley’s religious views remained controversial and by the time revolution erupted in France, they had elicited a reaction from British government officials, terrified by the contagion of revolution. Facing criminal prosecution… show more.

This first book in Kelle Riley’s new series has it all—a plot full of twists and turns, a super-smart sleuth, and just a smidge of romance. I love that the sleuth doesn't act impulsively and instead observes and deduces. In addition, there are yummy recipes, a cranky rescue cat, and several quirky secondary characters. I especially like the couple who own a dog bakery and their trained dog that discourages the goose population.

In The Poison Squad, Deborah Blum explores the era in American history before food and drugs were regulated, a wild time indeed when many patent medicines contained not only morphine or cocaine but a plethora of poisonous substances that killed many users.

Even worse, unregulated candy containing adulterated ingredients led to many children’s deaths. Blum not only does a wonderful job breaking down the science and politics involved in this fascinating story but gives a vivid picture of the late 19th century and early 20th in the U.S.

Today, when many are calling for deregulation, The Poison Squad is even more relevant. 

Now for some facts, although they will appear stranger than the fiction above. Born with a club foot and unable to join the army during World War II, Sydney Gottlieb became a leading covert warrior. For years, he oversaw some of the CIA’s most controversial programs. He developed poisons to kill foreign leaders and officials, and he worked in MKULTRA, the Agency’s program for mind control, which included the use of LSD, drugs, isolation, and other invasive experiments and forms of torture on witting and unwitting subjects.

The book is a detailed, if harrowing, history. It is even more impressive as most of the documents on these programs were destroyed by Gottlieb himself in 1973, under orders from the CIA Director at the time, Richard Helms. 

This amazing narrative history of the invention of synthetic fertilizer is arguably a bit off topic, except that the subtitle could have ended: …That Fed the World, But Now Generates 10 Percent of Agricultural Emissions.

Nitrogen fertilizer was probably the most important invention of the 20th century, even more so than TV or the bomb; half the 8 billion people on Earth wouldn’t be here without it.

But the Haber-Bosch chemical process that literally converts fossil fuels into nutrition has created all kinds of environmental problems, including not only greenhouse gases but nitrate pollution that has created a dead zone the size of Connecticut in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now a new scientific race is on, because farmers will need to produce 50 percent more calories by 2050 to feed the growing world population, but they’ll have to do it with a lot less fertilizer pollution and other agricultural messes.