Snowmobile

This accessible biography of snowmobile inventor Joseph-Armand Bombardier opens with his two-year-old son feverish and needing a way to the hospital through snowy rural Quebec. Older goes on to explain the many motivations and challenges he faced in realizing his dream of creating a machine that could drive on snow. Lauritano's ink-and-pencil sketches capture the early-twentieth-century era; photographs are also included. Timeline. Bib., glos., ind.

An absorbing narrative that covers a unique topic. The dramatic opening chapter immediately immerses readers in Joseph-Armand Bombardier’s life. Jules Older clearly portrays Bombardier’s lifelong interest in mechanics and invention with lively anecdotes. Bombardier built a miniature cannon at age fourteen that exploded “With a bang that rocked the town.” A year later, he created his first snow vehicle: “In a word it was dangerous.” And at age seventeen, he worked on a car that had stymied big-city mechanics: “They’d all tried; they’d all given up. The car’s next stop was the junkyard”—until Bombardier got his hands on it. While today’s readers likely know the snowmobile only as a recreational vehicle, they will come to appreciate the importance of Bombardier’s invention: “He designed it to carry doctors to patients, priests to parishioners, children to school. . . . He built them not only to improve the quality of rural life but also to save the lives of people in snowbound communities—and that’s just what those early snowmobiles did.” Michael Lauritano’s spare illustrations effectively evoke the period. Photographs of various snowmobiles (past and present) and a 1937 patent-application drawing add further visual appeal. Bombardier’s single-minded determination and perseverance through hardship and failure is inspiring; his story may motivate children to pursue their own interests through life’s ups and downs.