Thursday 10 August 2017

Invent It by Rob Beattie (QED Publishing)

Fancy yourself as the next Elon Musk or Sir Tim Berners-Lee? Here's a fantastic book to inspire young inventors!
"The world's next great invention is inside this book - just add you!" shouts the cover of Rob Beattie's hugely fascinating and brilliant "Invent it!"

Here's a book that doesn't just dish up a ton of dry facts about famous inventions, but shows you the path to creating your own amazing product - something that could revolutionise the way we live today, enhancing life for all of mankind.

(well, OK maybe my idea for self-lacing underpants might not quite tick that box but you never know!)

Rob takes us on a fascinating journey, the journey of an invention from the first few inklings of a good idea, through prototyping, testing, market research and eventually marketing and production until you see your amazing creation stacked on shelves ready for an eager public to hoover up in their droves.

Really though this is a brilliant book delving into the invention process, and also showing some utterly amazing (and not so amazing) examples from history to further inspire you.

The invention process. How you do go from an idea to a finished product? 
The book is fantastically presented and written to really engage inquisitive young minds with a streak of inventive genius of their own...

Perfecting your product. Want to confuse a 9 year old? Show them a phone with a dial and ask them to ring Grandma!
I think if anything, we loved seeing the crazy whacky inventions that DIDN'T work rather than the ones that did. Though obviously we wouldn't want to share the fate of the poor French guy who tested his parachute jacket by leaping off the Eiffel Tower (to his doom! Argh!)

What a brilliant book! So good that if it didn't already exist you'd have to invent it (thankfully Rob already beat us to it and did an amazing job!)

Charlotte's best bit: Learning all about some of the world's most famous inventions and how they came about

Daddy's favourite bit: A fascinating insight into the invention process from start to finish, chock full of amazing and inspirational ideas.

(kindly supplied for review)

"Invent It!" by Rob Beattie is out now, published by QED Publishing.