Category: Biography

The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines

5/27/2022

Roxie Munro
Visual Thinker

José Batlló’s house in Barcelona, Spain, was looking a little shabby. So, Batlló turned to Antoni Gaudí, the city’s most inventive architect—and got a house that astonished all Barcelona.

Its walls, studded with glittering blue and green shards, billowed like the sea. Some windows were egg-shaped, others had balconies resembling giant masks. The roof was more fanciful. Eerily iridescent, colors shifted from bluish green to golden orange. With scale-like tiles, it reminded people of a dinosaur’s backbone. Because of the oval windows, people called it the House of Yawns. Others, noticing columns that looked like shinbones, christened it House of Bones.

Born in 1852 into a family of coppersmiths, Gaudí grew up in a small town near Barcelona. As a boy he roamed the countryside making sketches, living in his own world of discovery and fantasy. Becoming an architect was his childhood dream.

He quickly developed a style entirely his own, drawing inspiration from nature rather than anything man-made. He was disdainful of straight lines. “They belong to men,” he used to say. “Curved lines belong to God.”

Near Casa Battló stands another Gaudi creation: Casa Mila, a six-story apartment building which, because of its soft swelling shapes, has been likened to human lips, pastries, and a hornet’s nest. Still, many people love it.

Among Gaudí’s accomplishments is what may be the world’s quirkiest park: Park Güell, a kind of fairy-tale fantasy, with two dancing gazelles flanking the entrance, a giant tile-encrusted lizard, and a roof topped with upturned coffee cups.

Deeply religious, Gaudí spent his last twenty years working on Sagrada Familia, a cathedral unlike any other, with eighteen towers symbolizing the apostles, evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and Christ. It became such an obsession with Gaudí that he set up residence at the worksite. Once something of a dandy, he became increasingly careless with his appearance. This neglect may have contributed to his death.

On a spring evening in 1926, taking one last loving look at a newly completed Sagrada Familia tower, he stepped off the sidewalk and was hit by a streetcar and knocked unconscious. Because of wretched clothing he was taken for a tramp and not immediately brought to a hospital. Gaudí was finally recognized, but was beyond help and died three days later.

The surprisingly different exterior of the Battló house. Art by Roxie Munro

Antoni Gaudi in 1878. Wikimedia

The roof (left) and the interior of the Battló house reflect the architect's unique ideas. Art by Roxie Munro

Gaudi's Park Güell is one of the most famous sights of Barcelona. welcoming more than 4 million visitors a year.
Art by Roxie Munro.

The tile-encrusted salamander in Park Güell has become a symbol of Gaudí's work. Wikimedia

Check your favorite bookstore for Roxie's latest book coming out on February 6th. Rodent Rascals has already garnered three starred reviews with Roxie's fabulous actual-sized artwork accompanied by fascinating facts about 21 rodents who share our world.
Roxie is a member of Authors on Call where she can visit your classroom and show you her work herself. Read more about here here.

MLA 8 Citation
Munro, Roxie. "The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines." Nonfiction Minute`, iNK
Think Tank, 31 Jan. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
the-architect-who-hated-straight-lines.

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Alberto Santos-Dumont

5/20/2022

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Roxie Munro
Visual Thinker

All art by Roxie Munro

Horse-drawn carriages stopped dead in their tracks. People pointed at the sky. “Look!” they shouted. “There’s Santos in one of his flying machines!” Above, along the Champs–Elysées, sailed a strange-looking contraption: a cigar-shaped balloon under which was mounted a gasoline engine, a large propeller, and, in a wicker basket, a dapper little man with a neatly trimmed moustache, starched collar, and a Panama hat. Spotting an agreeable sidewalk café, he landed his airship and hitched it to a lamppost. Then he calmly ordered his morning cup of coffee

He was Alberto Santos-Dumont, a very short twenty-nine-year-old Brazilian aviator who loved everything high. (His dining table had nine-foot legs with chairs to match. To reach it, his manservant climbed a step stool.)

A year earlier, in 1901, Santos had astounded Parisians with one of the most spectacular feats in early aviation history. A prize of one-hundred thousand francs had been offered to the first pilot who took off from the Paris Aero Club, circled the Eiffel Tower, and returned to the club within thirty minutes.

Though the money meant little to Alberto—his father had left him with a fortune— it presented a challenge.

Postcard showing the 14-bis. Via Wikimedia

His first attempt failed when his 16-horsepower engine conked out, causing his dirigible to fall into a tree. On his second try, the airship crashed into a roof, and the brave Brazilian was left suspended in his basket fifty feet above the ground.

His third attempt was a success. “Did I make it?” he shouted as he passed the finish line. “Oui! Oui!” spectators roared back at him, throwing handkerchiefs into the air and whirling their hats on top of their walking sticks.

Flight was Alberto’s great passion. Arriving in Paris at 18, he had a balloon made— so tiny it could be packed into a travel bag, but big enough to carry his pint-size figure. Then came dirigibles —fourteen altogether.

In 1906, after the Wright brother’s historic flight, he built his own airplane. Named 14 bis, it looked like a bunch of boxes haphazardly thrown together. But it flew, making him the first man in Europe to fly a heavier-than-air machine.

Demoiselle over Paris. Via Wikimedia

His final aircraft was made of bamboo, aluminum, and silk. Seeing him buzz around in it, people shouted, “Our Santos is riding a dragonfly!” And that became its name: Demoiselle (dragonfly).

Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical airplane. Library of Congress.

Le Petit Santos— a remarkable little man indeed.

What is the smallest rodent in the world? What is the biggest? How long can rodents live? How do they find mates? In this wonderfully detailed new book from Roxie Munro, life-sized illustrations of rodent species from around the world accompany simple, thorough text describing their life cycles, sizes, habitats, and ranges. From ground hogs to guinea pigs and pygmy jerboas to capybaras, kids will learn all about the rascally rodents who share our world!
Roxie's Rodent Rascals has earned starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and School Library Journal.

MLA 8 Citation
Munro, Roxie. "Alberto Santos-Dumont." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 16 May
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Alberto-Santos-Dumont.

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The Magician of Iron

4/12/2022

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Roxie Munro
Visual Thinker

The great Paris tower was underway. From each corner of a broad base the size of a football field, four spidery iron structures rose, curving inward in one majestic sweep toward the middle. The construction – a web of connecting girders – called for 300 workers to assemble some 15,000 pieces of iron and snap 2.5 million rivets into place. This would be the world’s tallest man-made structure, reaching a height of 300 meters (934 feet). A glorious demonstration of engineering, it was conceived by Gustave Eiffel, the most illustrious engineer of nineteenth-century France.

The tower was to be the focal point of the International Exhibition of Paris in 1889, commemorating the 100th birthday of the French Revolution. After that, since it had no practical use, it was to be torn down.

It took two years, two months, and three days to build the Eiffel Tower. Eiffel used wrought iron, which was a relatively new building material at the time, used primarily for bridges and aqueducts. As the tower rose, becoming the city’s most prominent feature, not everyone approved. “Useless and monstrous,” one newspaper called it. Another described it as an “odious column of bolted metal.”

Called the Magician of Iron, Eiffel’s mathematical prowess and attention to detail was legendary. To put the tower project on paper took 30 draftsmen working full time for 18 months. Every rivet of the 2.5 million needed for the structure had its designated place, down to a fraction of a millimeter.

The Tower became the hit of the International Exhibition, with nearly two million people visiting it. Still, not everyone loved this prodigious web of steel girders. A famous writer was once asked why he ate lunch there every day, since he was known to hate the sight of it. He replied, “Because it’s the only place in Paris where I can’t see the damn thing.”

So why wasn’t the Eiffel Tower torn down? It almost was. What saved it was the radio broadcasting center and the weather station that Eiffel installed at the top.

Now France’s most famous landmark, it is not the only national symbol that Eiffel was involved with. He also built the iron skeleton of a lady we’re all familiar with: The Statue of Liberty.

As for the Eiffel Tower, “I ought to be jealous of that tower,” he once said. “She is more famous than I am.”

The Eiffel Tower under construction highlights the intricacy of the design as well as the massive size of the project in relation to the city of Paris. Art by Roxie Munro

After dark during the 1889 Exposition, the newly-opened tower was lit by hundreds of gas lamps, and a beacon sent out three beams of red, white and blue light. Georges Garen via Wikimedia Commons

The Parisian art community criticized the tower even before it was built, calling it "a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, Eiffel responded, "The tower will be the tallest building that men have ever built. ...And why would that which is admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris? ". Wikimedia Commons

Eiffel's most famous works are still major tourist attractions in the 21st century. The Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world. An average of 25,000 people ascend the tower every day. Approximately four million people visit New York's Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island each year. Photo Benh Lieu Song viia Wikimedia Commons. Art by Roxie Munro

One of Roxie's most recent, Masterpiece Mix, is a book about art. As an artist searches for inspiration, she explores thirty-seven paintings of different genres, and comes up with a grand finale, using all of them. The book has "smart, concise, marvelously amplifying backmatter" (Kirkus), a dedicated web page, and free downloads.

MLA 8 Citation
Munro, Roxie. "The Magician of Iron." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 7 Mar.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/The-Magician-of-Iron.

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Isaac Newton's Wonder Years

3/28/2022

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Kerrie Logan Hollihan
Teaching the Power of Wonder

   In spring 1665 a college student named Isaac Newton studied natural philosophy, what we call “science.” Back then, a good student could learn everything to know about the natural world. But plague, the Black Death, came to England. Cambridge University closed. Isaac went home to Woolsthorpe.

            For two years Isaac thought about his studies during four years at university. He’d always been thoughtful—not the best at games, making friends, or minding sheep. But everybody knew Isaac Newton liked to think. Folks told time by the sundial he’d drawn on a wall.

            Home at Woolsthorpe, Isaac’s learning about science and math bubbled up in his head like yeast rising in a loaf of bread.

            So... Newton unplugged. His mind roamed like that of an artist or composer. He was driven by the need to create—not paintings or symphonies, but questions.

            “Why do things always fall down?”

            “Why does the earth move around the sun?

            “Why doesn’t the moon fall onto the earth?”

            “Does everything ‘up there” work like things work ‘down here?’”

            Isaac Newton answered his questions with three science rules, Newton’s Laws of Motion.

            At Woolsthorpe, Newton grappled with the concept of moving objects. He worked out the math to find the area under curves. He called this math fluxions. Today we call this calculus, useful for launching rockets or tracking TV signals.

            Once back at Cambridge, Newton said nothing until he read someone else’s paper on fluxions. Newton published a better paper. Soon he was Cambridge’s top math professor.

            Isaac Newton wondered another twenty years. He played with prisms in a dark room and theorized that white light comprises the visible spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. He practiced alchemy and chemistry, looking for the legendary philosopher’s stone to turn base metals to gold. In 1687, Newton published our most important science book, the Principia.

            In the Principia, Newton showed how laws of gravity and motion work the same at great distances—far off in space, or in your classroom. We accept these ideas, but in 1687 many still had medieval beliefs that sun, moon, planets, and stars all traveled in their own crystal spheres.

            Yes, Newton wondered about A LOT:

Gravity
Forces
Mass
Inertia
Math
Motion
Light
God
???

Whatever interests you, I hope you’ll think about it—a lot! Like Isaac Newton, take time to WONDER!

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. Based on a portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1702, via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Isaac Newton's own first edition copy of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica with his handwritten corrections for the twentieth edition. Photograph Andrew Dunn via Wikimedia Commons

Trinity College, the part of the University of Cambridge where Newton worked and lived. Library of Congress

This statue of the young Isaac Newton stands at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Look carefully around his feet for a hint on what he is wondering about. If you can’t figure it out, then read about Newton and gravity.
Wikimedia Commons

Featuring 21 hands-on projects that explore the scientific concepts Isaac Newton developed, Kerrie Logan Hollihan's Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids paints a rich portrait of the brilliant and complex man and provides readers with a hands-on understanding of astronomy, physics, and mathematics. A time line, excerpts from Newton's own writings, online resources, and a reading list enhance this unique activity book.

MLA 8 Citation
Hollihan, Kerrie Logan. "Isaac Newton's Wonder Years." Nonfiction Minute, iNK
Think Tank, 21 Feb. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
isaac-newtons-wonder years.

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The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines

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The Magician of Iron

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