The printed book is truly delightful. It contains a mostly complete explanation of how the difference engine worked and how the analytical engine was supposed to work. It's also full of scholarly footnotes to primary sources of everything she put into it. And it's fun! Steampunk fantasy of what could have been. I hope it gets adapted to a movie or TV series some day.
That sounds vaguely familiar, so I think that it does have it. If not, it has to be at least mentioned in the footnotes. In fact, I think it might be one of the first pages of the alternate-universe section?
The footnotes in Ms. Padua's book are _AMAZING_. More entertaining than the book itself at times. I have never enjoyed reading footnotes so much. That sounds like faint praise, but I mean it as real praise. ;) She has multi-page footnotes, breaks the fourth wall in HILARIOUS ways, and introduces you to characters like I. K. Brunel.
This is a book that I treasure, and I wish I could explain why I love it. It is a comic book about Nerd Things, with footnotes, and footnotes for footnotes, and so on. It's a labor of love, masterfully executed, and I feel like I want to read parts of it again for the fun of it.
Her book (graphic novel) is worth it for the footnotes alone (some of which take up more than half a page), even if you don't like steampunk fantasy with Lovelace, Babbage, Boole, Brunel, and more... And who wouldn't?
I love the depiction of Brunel as some kind of 19th century steampunk Wolverine. And those badass boasts! Some of them based on real historical boasts! "I smell... steam!" "Looks like you need an engineer." "With all the steam I can command, your ladyship." I hope the mythology around these characters keeps on growing.
I desperately wanted to love this book as it has all the right elements: Lovelace, graphic novel, Babbage, the difference engine, steam punk... However, I felt the number of footnotes were excessive. The footnote material was excellent, but it felt like when movies resort to using a voice over to explain the plot.
I bought and read the book hoping it would be suitable for my kids (10 & 13), but having half its content in footnotes killed it as a kid friendly book.
If you are looking for a good book for kids with smart female leads (a fictionalized Ada Lovelace and Marry Shelley) I highly recommend The Case of the Missing Moonstone (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency #1) by Jordan Stratford. Probably best for ages 6-10.
> hoping it would be suitable for my kids (10 & 13), but having half its content in footnotes killed it as a kid friendly book.
I remember being exactly that old as your kids, absolutely hating the books that were specially made to be "kids friendly."
Because I was aware that the books existed that weren't dumbed-down. That the grown ups were reading. And of course I wanted as soon as possible to be one of those. And I liked to see and learn the details when the topic interested me. That included pictures, diagrams and footnotes.
So from the point of view of me, age 10-13: I hate your approach to your kids (that were the words of me then, maybe I'd more polite now).
I can imagine that your kids actually need some "kids friendly" books as seen as such by the parents, but you should honestly ask yourself if there's your responsibility for that too. I know my nieces also prefer the material for grownups, if it interests them.
I know what I didn't like at that time: the long fiction books about some people who lived hundred years ago, at the times when everything was different. I didn't care to read about what some lieutenant of some non existing army said to some young aristocrat woman in some country I never saw, at the ball that actually never happened, but that the author invented to pass the point and obscure the relation to the now long-dead people he knew, and how the author thought the woman thought about it etc. But reading details about something, if I was interested at the topic, more of that please.
So if something is not kids friendly, it's more that the kids don't care too much about history, and they even more can detect if something is "modern" or not. You know, the parents are already the generation that "doesn't get it."
My position: if the kids don't like something, fine. But don't decide for them.
