Billing itself as “the first picture book ever done for modern children and their world” when it was published in 1926, this story of an industrious mechanical boy returns with a critical essay by professor and PW
contributor Nathalie op de Beeck and a foreword from Harvard's John Stilgoe. Liddell's lithe hero uses drills, shovels, looms and electricity to demonstrate technology's seemingly limitless possibilities. The modern, playful artwork and some whimsical asides (“He isn't making anything but noise in this picture,” writes Liddell as Little Machinery gleefully operates a jackhammer) will delight the design-minded. In looking at how technology was depicted early in the assembly line–era, readers can see a clear conduit to children's ongoing fascination with trucks, tools and other mechanisms. (May)
