Ordinary Genius: The Story of Albert Einstein

by Stephanie Sammartino McPherson

Book Overview

What do you think of when you hear the name Albert Einstein? Perhaps you picture an old man with rumpled clothing, a halo of wild white hair, and an impish grin. You might know that he developed two of the most important and complex theories in science, the theories of relativity. You probably think of the word genius. Albert Einstein may have been a genius--but he was also much more than that. Einstein was a man who hated violence and took a stand...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1575050676
• ISBN13: 9781575050676
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: First Avenue Editions (Tm)
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 10 to 15 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 10

Customer Reviews

Informative and Interesting

I liked this book because it was very informative and interesting. It was short and quick and I found out things about Albert Einstein. It covers his background, personal life and professional life. As a boy he was fascinated with a compass and wanted to know why the arrow always pointed north. When his father told him about magnetic fields, he was very excited about magnetism. That was just the beginning of his quest for discovering new things. In addition to enjoying equations and explaining his theories in an understandable way, he played the violin and liked sailing too. He denounced his German citizenship and became a citizen of the United States, none of which I knew before reading this book. His advice was to always ask questions and never lose your curiosity about things. A lot of his teachers didn't like that he asked so many questions that they couldn't answer. When he became a professor, he encouraged his students to ask questions and was never upsset if he didn't know the answer. He just told them he didn't know. Karen Arlettaz Zemek, author of "My Funny Dad, Harry"

Personal stories and facts kept my interest

Reviewed by Spencer Zaborowski (age 12) for Reader Views (12/07) "Ordinary Genius: The Story of Albert Einstein" is a biography, which is a story of a person's life, of the famous German scientist. He was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany. He had one sister. He was thought of by his parents as being slow and not very bright, because he had an unusually large head when he was born and he did not speak much until he was nine-years-old. He was not a good student and was teased a lot by his teachers and other students, because he was different and questioned them a lot. He finally moved to Switzerland and worked for awhile before being accepted into college. He was curious about the world around him, especially science. He was a professor at universities in Switzerland and Germany, and he worked very long hours finishing scientific papers. He wrote the famous Theory of Relativity in 1916. Albert Einstein came to the United States in 1933 and lived in New Jersey because he was worried about how Jews were treated in Germany. He married twice - his second wife was his cousin. He died in 1955. At first, I thought this book would be boring and full of science and facts, like some other biographies I have read. But after the first few pages, it was hard to put down! The reading was interesting, and the black and white pictures throughout the book helped to make the story easy to follow. There were not a lot of technical words that would be hard to understand. The book did not go into detail about the scientific things that he wrote about. Instead, the book was more about his personal life and his odd personality. I learned a lot of things about him that I had not known. For example, Einstein never learned to drive a car because he was confused by mechanical things. That was very funny to me. I would recommend "Ordinary Genius: The Story of Albert Einstein" to middle school-aged kids. I don't normally like to read nonfiction books--only when I have to for school--but this one kept my interest because it told a lot of personal stories and facts about Einstein that made him seem ordinary, like the title says.

ordinary genius

I love this book it gave me alot of great information, I did'nt have to go to other sources to get information about his life. I'm doing a report on his life for a school project. I'm going to dress like he did and memorize a speech I'm going to write and then give it in front of my school and all the parents of our school.

An Informative Book

This book is very informative. It is a great way to find information about Albert Einstein. I wrote a wonderful report using the information in this book. It explains his theorys of relativity in a simple understandable way.

Inspiring introduction to Einstein's Genius

Mc Pherson's well written biography of Einstein is sure to please young readers in their quest for knowledge. Its photographs are excellent in content and placement, and the text is superb. A must-read for anyone with children who wants them to appreciate this great man, deemed TIME's "Person of the Century"