THE SOLE MAN

Jan Matzeliger’s name might not be on everyone’s lips, but it should be on everyone’s feet.

The son of a mechanic-shop owner, Jan was raised in Dutch-speaking Suriname. At 19, he began working on a merchant ship, sailing around the world until he landed in Philadelphia. (The year is unspecified, but readers are told that “the Civil War had ended nearly a decade earlier.”) As “a Black immigrant who couldn’t speak English,” Jan struggled but found work in a shoe factory. Seeing the labor-intensive hand process used to sew a shoe’s upper piece to its sole, he proposed mechanizing the task. The other workers scoffed. Even after moving to a shoe-manufacturing center in Lynn, Massachusetts, Jan still met with skepticism, but he persisted, arduously building his machine (which dramatically increased productivity) and receiving a patent. Keller details Jan’s painstaking process, reinforcing the message of perseverance. Costanza’s flat, clear illustrations, in muted sepia and blue, abound in period details. They are slightly stylized and somewhat fanciful but reflect photographic evidence of Matzeliger’s appearance and provide touches of humor. Playful use of typography and depictions of the machine parts Jan designed add appeal. Only the final pages of the backmatter reveal that Matzeliger died of tuberculosis at 37, just six years after his patent was approved.

Skill and persistence lead to STEM success against historical odds in this brief and attractive biography.