A Curious Mind and a Very Big Heart: The Story of Designer and Innovator Sara Little Turnbull

The N95 mask that became a part of daily life for many during the Covid-19 pandemic has its origins in an invention by industrial design pioneer Sara Little Turnbull (1917–2015). Attentive text from Lewis (Can Sophie Change the World?) notes the way Turnbull started life “looking carefully” at things while at museums and at home with her mother: “The delicate shape of an egg./ The iridescent skin of a purple onion.” As her curiosity leads her to study design, stylish editorial spot art shows how she becomes the brains behind cake mixes, ready-to-go gift ribbons, and an inspiration-related method of ideation: watching a cheetah gripping its prey in Kenya gives her the idea for a pot lid, and observing cumbersome hospital masks suggests to her room for improvement. In a breezy bio that’s as much about the figure’s tenacity as it is about her powers of insight, one playful illustration shows her threading her way through a maze—symbolic of a knotty problem—that eventually leaves her confounded. But Turnbull always persisted, reminding herself that “if you don’t stretch, you don’t know where the edge is.” An afterword concludes. Ages 5–8. Agent: Anne Moore Armstrong, Bright Agency. (July)