JUVENILE · EXPERIMENTS
John Farndon
Also known as: J. Farndon, Farndon John
John Farndon (born 1960) is a British writer of books, plays and music. He is best known as a writer of, and contributor to, science books for children.
Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.
— from Roots
Most acclaimed
Weather and climate
1988
En moins de vingt doubles pages, une dizaine de points à la fois permettent d'explorer quelques faits, curiosités et chiffres à propos des climats, des phénomènes météorologiques et de la science qui les étudie. -- Très bien illustré de manière réaliste, cette introduction est agréable bien que certaines notions présentées soient spécialisées. [SDM].
Roots
Roots is a novel written by Alex Haley and published in 1976. It portrays the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent 46 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including 22 weeks in that list’s top spot. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second mini-series, Roots: The Next Generations, in 1979. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America’s past, and we continue to feel its reverberations today.
Oxygen
2001
"What is discovery? Why is it important to be first? These questions trouble the characters in 'Oxygen'. The action alternates between 1777 and 2001, the Centenary of the Nobel Prize, when the Nobel Foundation decides to inaugurate a 'retro-Nobel' award for discoveries that preceded the establishment of the Prize in 1901. The Foundation thinks this will be easy. In the good old days, wasn't science done for science's sake? Wasn't discovery simple, pure, and unalloyed by controversy, priority, claims, and hype? The Nobel Committee decides to reward the discovery of Oxygen, since that launched the Chemical Revolution. Lavoisier is a natural choice. But what about Scheele? What about Priestley? Didn't they first discover oxygen? The play brings the candidates and their wives to 1777 Stockholm at the invitation of King Gustav III. Through the scientists' wives, in a sauna and elsewhere, we learn of their lives and those of their husbands. Meanwhile in 2001, the Nobel Committee argues about the conflicting claims of the three men. The ethical issues around priority and discovery at the heart of this play are as timely today as they were in 1777. As are the ironies of revolutions: Lavoisier, the chemical revolutionary, is a political conservative, who loses his life in the Jacobin terror. Priestley, the political radical, is a chemical conservative. And Scheele just wants to run his pharmacy. He, the first man on earth to make oxygen, got least credit for it. Will that situation be repaired 230 years after his discovery?"--Inside front flap.