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By: Chris Barton,
on 11/13/2015
Over at Watch. Connect. Read., Mr. Schu is unveiling the cover of Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions. That’s my upcoming picture book with Don Tate, the follow up to our first collaboration, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch. Whoosh!, a biography of the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun, comes out […]
By: Chris Barton,
on 6/23/2014
There’s a lot that I love about this recent presentation by Lonnie Johnson — rocket scientist, Super Soaker inventor, and pursuer of solutions to the world’s energy problems.
But my favorite part starts at the 5:22 mark with “When I was a kid…” He goes on to discuss how Lost in Space and Robbie the Robot inspired him as a teenager in the 1960s to build his own robot. Except that…
“Nobody told me that the other robots that I was watching [on TV] had people inside.”
Even if he had known, I doubt he would have let it stop him.
And if you’re thinking that Lonnie Johnson would make a great subject for a picture book biography, Don Tate and I agree. Our book, Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super Stream of Ideas, will be published by Charlesbridge in 2016.
