Whirligigs: The Wondrous Windmills of Vollis Simpson's Imagination
By (Author) Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
Astra Publishing House
Minedition (imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc)
10th December 2024
United States
Children
Non Fiction
Childrens / Teenage general interest: Science and technology
709.2
Hardback
32
Width 240mm, Height 286mm, Spine 9mm
461g
Take a journey through the creative process that led folk artist Vollis Simpson to create his wonderful and whimsical wind-powered whirligigs and more in this STEAM/STEM picture book. Take a journey through the creative process that led folk artist Vollis Simpson to create his wonderful and whimsical wind-powered whirligigs and more in this STEAM/STEM picture book. Vollis Simpson was a man with a curious mind-always eager to know how things worked and how to fix them. Growing up on a farm in North Carolina, he loved to tinker with machines. And when he served in the Army Air Corps during WWII, Vollis kept right on tinkering. His ingenuity allowed him to build things no one would have thought to create from scraps-a washing machine out of airplane parts and a motorcycle out of a bike. After the war, his passion for metal creations picked up speed-turning into a whirlwind of windmills as far as the eye could see. Luckily, Vollis's fanciful and colorful windmills have been preserved at a park in Wilson, NC, where visitors can behold his magnificent and towering creations forever whizzing in the air.
New York Times bestselling author Carole Boston Weatherford's 60-plus books include the Caldecott Honor book Unspeakable- The Tulsa Race Massacre, for which she was also awarded the Coretta Scott King Author Award and a Sibert Honor; the Newbery Honor winner Box; and the Caldecott Honor winners Freedom in Congo Square, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Moses. She won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor for Becoming Billie Holiday. Weatherford teaches composition and children's literature at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. Edwin Fotheringham is the award-winning illustrator of many picture book biographies, including Full of Beans, Blue Grass Boy, and Dazzlin' Dolly. His work has received the Parents' Choice Gold Award, been named an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book, and more. He is also the illustrator of the Tony Baloney series by Pam Munoz Ryan.