The Most Magnificent Thing

For her story of a girl’s ambition to build “the most magnificent thing,” Spires (the Binky the Space Cat books) draws her towing a red wagon full of random junk. “The girl saws and glues and adjusts. She stands, examines and stares. She twists and tweaks and fastens.” Shadowed by her stubby bulldog assistant, she hits a roadblock, and her frustration grows: “Her hands feel too big to work and her brain is too full of all the not-right things.” It’s the bulldog that realizes that his boss needs a break. In the act of taking a walk, her mind clears: “Bit by bit, the mad gets pushed out of her head.” The “magnificent thing” turns out to be a bulldog-size sidecar for her scooter. It’s a useful description of the creative process, an affirmation of making rather than buying, and a model for girl engineers. There are quiet laughs, too, like the description of the girl’s work area as “somewhere out of the way”—smack in the middle of the sidewalk, that is, annoying the maximum number of neighbors. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)