Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of over 500 years ago, of possible mechanical inventions are compared to modern-day machines such as bicycles, projectors, aircra as well as robots.

This is a picture book about the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci. The book starts out by informing us of Leonardo's 20,000 pages of notes he took that were filled of his ideas for inventions. Unfortunately many of Leonardo's ideas were too advanced for the time, so he could not make his visions come to life. Most of his notes were also lost to time. The book compares modern inventions to the notes of Leonardo. The book is simple enough for small children without boring them with too many intricate details. The illustrations are bold, colorful, and take up the entire page. I think this book would appeal to children because of this. I thought it was a brilliant way to introduce a revolutionary thinker to children who lose interest easily. ( )

Summary:
This is a picture book biography about all of the inventions DaVinci helped to create. The pictures are bright and offer a fun way of looking at the roots of different inventions based on DaVinci's many pages of notes, without going to far into detail. DaVinci was many things an artist, inventor, engineer, and scientist. This book shocases some of brilliant work.

Personal Reaction:
DaVinci was a brilliant man and reading this teaches younger children all about his amazing inventions. I have always love learning about DaVinci and wished I could have read this when I was a kid.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1.) Have each student write a brief paper about one of Davinci's inventions.

2.) Have each student think of something they would invent and then have them draw it to present to the class. ( )

Summary:
Neo Leo The Ageless Ideas of Leonardo da Vinci is a biography children’s book. The book is informative and talks about the early inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. The book includes dates of his ideas and also the men and women who have used da Vinci’s notes on his inventions and knowledge. The book includes many of da Vinci’s ideas; from human anatomy to air travel.

Personal reaction:
I enjoyed reading this book. It was entertaining and I learnt new information on da Vinci’s creations, especially the date’s of when his ideas were brought to life. The illustrations were very descriptive. The illustrator used creative facial expressions on the characters in the book. He also drew da Vinci as an old man with a long white bread, symbolizing he is a man of old and wise knowledge. The book uses wide spread pages and shows comparison, by having more modern inventions listed on the left-hand side and da Vinci’s notes, on the right-hand side, that supported those inventions. This shows children how different life was in the earlier years and how much we have developed today.

Classroom extensions:
1. Bring wooden sticks, paper and glue to class and build bicycles, helicopters and parachutes etc.
2. Learn about the history of Leonardo da Vinci.
3. Learn about how the heart pumps blood throughout the body and bring an artificial heart valve model to class. ( )

This was definitely a book I could share with my early childhood students. I never really knew all the different thing Leonardo da Vinci was responsible for creating ahead of his time. The vocabulary is very rich so this is also a great book to pull vocabulary from for students. The books shows how inventions today are similar to those of Leonardo da Vinci with a lot of pictures which can drive discussion of compare and contrasting. Overall it is a good nonfiction book. ( )