Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: ​Montserrat Navarro

Book Title: ​Marvelous Mattie How Margaret E. Knight Became an

Inventor

Author & Illustrator: ​Emily Arnold McCully

Genre: ​Biography

Publisher/Year: ​Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) / 2013

Evaluate the Book for the following elements

Style and Language:​ Using examples for the book, explain the following:
Word choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share
unexpected insights or interesting information the reader learns from this
story. (5 points)

Word Choice: struts, weaving rooms, tremendous, locomotive, trudging,

missiles, gingerly, triumph, “idea took ​shape​” and “​loaded​ a roll of paper”

Dialogue: “You’ve done it!” Sadie cried “I have!” Mattie agreed - this
dialogue is important because it demonstrates all the hard work that paid
off for Mattie as an inventor.

Rhythm: none

Sentence Length: about 3-5 sentences every page.

Character:​ With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)

Who is the main character?

How can the reader relate to the character?

Who are the supporting characters?

Main character: Mattie - “strange girl… happiest with her pencil, her jack
knife, and her hammer”

The reader can relate because the main character is curious and has
curiosity to fix and invent.

Supporting characters: widowed mother, brothers, Sadie, Mr. Baldwin

Plot:​ Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)

Mattie as a young child used her father’s toolbox to invent new things. As
an adult she took the opportunity to make inventions and patent them
until one day, her idea was stolen and she had to fight for her justice in
court in which she won the case. She proved people wrong that even a
woman can understand the “mechanical complexities” and can invent.

Setting​: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)

Theme:​ What is the main message of this book? (2 points)

This book takes place in a little house in York, Maine. / 1850

Women can be inventors too. Follow your passion and don’t give up.

Illustration​: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories

Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon

art)? (2 points)

realism

Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons,

acrylic, chalk): (2 points)

Pencil and watercolors

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in
the illustrations: (3)

Line:​ tree branch, bricks, hair

Shapes: ​circles for sun wheels and heads, squares for windows and bags

Color:​ red, yellow, green, brown

Texture: ​wrinkles on clothes, grass, ground

Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and

dark space and all pages the same or different). (3)

Three sections to a page: the writing of the story, the illustration of the
writing and at the bottom is Mattie’s sketches of her inventions.

Child Development Theory​: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social

Emotional to describe the connection to the book Chose 1 only (5 points)
Emotional Development:

Identify the age: ​12+ years old

Explain the social development for this age and how the book relates

to the emotional level you chose:

At this age, Piaget refers to it as Formal Operation in which one

understands the world through hypothetical thinking and scientific
reasoning. I chose this because the main character happens to be 12
years old when she starts to think with scientific reasoning and create
inventions.

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: _______​3​______

Why?

I love that this book has a storyline yet is very informative about Margaret
E. Knight’s biography. It uses word choices that will have students
thinking and analyzing. I love the theme of this story as well.