ATOM

A valiant attempt to make modern atomic theory comprehensible to the picture-book set.

From first spread to last, exuberant typographical design combines with bright colors, cartoon images, and collage assemblages of clipped bits of paper and old portraits of Einstein and other luminaries to create considerable visual brio. Miles explains how we may not always know exactly where electrons are, but they, along with protons and (sometimes) neutrons, make up atoms, atoms of the same sort make up elements as charted on the periodic table, and elements combine into, say, all of the components in a chocolate-chip cookie. “And that’s nothing compared to living things.” But the author achieves a coherent narrative only by fudging (so to speak), surrounding said cookie, for instance, with chemical formulas but admitting in a footnote that chocolate alone actually has more ingredients than he has room to list. He outright ignores certain complications like isotopes, fundamental forces, or (aside from one reference buried in the closing timeline) quarks. A quote right at the outset from Neils Bohr alluding to how quantum theory is a total game-changer leaves readers to wonder how much of the ensuing presentation actually represents reality. All of the historical figures in view are White, but the fictional human characters that populate the pages are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An animated precis—but it’s quixotic at best and somewhat shifty as a foundation for further study.