Whirligigs: The Wondrous Windmills of Vollis Simpson's Imagination by Weatherford, Carole Boston

Whirligigs: The Wondrous Windmills of Vollis Simpson's Imagination

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2025 Best STEM Book Winner

Take a journey through the creative process that led folk artist Vollis Simpson to create his wonderful and whimsical wind-powered whirligigs and more in this STEAM/STEM picture book.

Vollis Simpson was a man with a curious mind--always eager to know how things worked and how to fix them. Growing up on a farm in North Carolina, he loved to tinker with machines. And when he served in the Army Air Corps during WWII, Vollis kept right on tinkering. His ingenuity allowed him to build things no one would have thought to create from scraps--a washing machine out of airplane parts and a motorcycle out of a bike.

After the war, his passion for metal creations picked up speed--turning into a whirlwind of windmills as far as the eye could see. Luckily, Vollis's fanciful and colorful windmills have been preserved at a park in Wilson, NC, where visitors can behold his magnificent and towering creations forever whizzing in the air.

Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Publisher: Calkins Creek Books
Published: 11/12/2024
Pages: 32
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 11.20h x 9.30w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781662680410
Audience: Ages 9-12


Review Citation(s):
School Library Journal 09/01/2024 pg. 122
Publishers Weekly 09/02/2024
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2024
Booklist 10/15/2024 pg. 48
Horn Book Magazine 01/01/2025 pg. 107

About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Carole Boston Weatherford's 60-plus books include the Caldecott Honor book Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, for which she was also awarded the Coretta Scott King Author Award and a Sibert Honor; the Newbery Honor winner Box; and the Caldecott Honor winners Freedom in Congo Square, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Moses. She won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor for Becoming Billie Holiday. Weatherford teaches composition and children's literature at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

Edwin Fotheringham is the award-winning illustrator of many picture book biographies, including Full of Beans, Blue Grass Boy, and Dazzlin' Dolly. His work has received the Parents' Choice Gold Award, been named an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book, and more. He is also the illustrator of the Tony Baloney series by Pam Muñoz Ryan.