Alexander Graham Bell Answers the Call - Hardcover

Mary Ann Fraser

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580897215 ISBN 13: 9781580897211

Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing,U.S., 2017

Synopsis

Well before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Aleck (as his family called him) was a curious boy, interested in how and why he was able to hear the world all around him. His father was a speech therapist who invented the Visible Alphabet and his mother was hearing impaired, which only made Aleck even more fascinated by sound vibration and modes of communication.
Naturally inquisitive and inclined to test his knowledge, young Aleck was the perfect person to grow up in the Age of Invention. As a kid he toyed with sound vibrations and began a life of inventing.
This in-depth look at the life and inspiration of the brilliant man who invented the tele-phone is sure to fire up the imaginations of young readers who question why and how things work.
Driven by curiosity and an eagerness to help others, Aleck became a teacher for the deaf. His eventual invention of the telephone proved that he never stopped thinking big or experimenting with sound.
Backmatter includes more information about Bell's inventions, a timeline of his life, a bibliography, and sources for further learning.

About this title

About the Author

MARY ANN FRASER has worked on more than sixty books for children, including No Yeti Yet (Peter Pauper) and Heebie-Jeebie Jamboree (Boyds Mills). She lives in Sunnyvale, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Alexander Graham Bell Answers the Call

By Mary Ann Fraser

Charlesbridge

Copyright © 2017 Mary Ann Fraser
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-58089-721-1

From the beginning, the world all around spoke to Alexander Graham Bell. And he listened.

His family called him Aleck. To his eager ears, the hustle and bustle of 1840s Edinburgh, Scotland, was a symphony of every pitch and tone.

He even wandered into a field once to see if he could hear the wheat grow. Each new sound whispered to Aleck's curiosity. How was he able to hear? What made one noise different from another? Why could he hear some sounds but not others?

While Aleck trained his ears to the sounds of speech, his mother heard very little of it. Eliza Bell had lost most of her hearing as a child. Still, she was a gifted portrait painter and pianist, filling their home with art and song. To hear notes, she lay an ear tube across the piano's soundboard.

Aleck had to speak into the same ear tube for his mother to understand him. The awkward device acted as a hearing aide, but a poor one at best. How he wished he could find a better way for his mother to clearly hear his voice, the piano, the world around them.

Along with his brothers, Melly and Ted, Aleck learned to play the piano before he could read. Sometimes the music rang in his mind for days. He'd lay awake at night puzzling over how instruments produced notes. How were he and his brothers able to hear the notes when his mother needed the aid of an ear tube?

His father explained that sounds are vibrations. Unlike his mother's, Aleck's ears were able to collect the vibrations and send the information to his brain. Of course, Aleck had to test this notion out for himself. Could other parts of his body sense sound vibration, too?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Alexander Graham Bell Answers the Call by Mary Ann Fraser. Copyright © 2017 Mary Ann Fraser. Excerpted by permission of Charlesbridge.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing,U.S.
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580897215
• ISBN 13: 9781580897211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32