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How We Are Smart

Review
By Booklist

A new take on the many recent collective biographies, this picture book for older readers celebrates 12 high achievers and their different ways of being smart–from artist Georgia O’Keeffe (‘picture smart’) and ballerina Maria Tallchief (‘body smart’) to physicist Luis Alvarez (‘logic smart’). Each subject gets a double-page spread that includes a simple, rhyming poem, a personal quote, and a brief biography opposite a portrait, in muted colors, set against a background of elements that clarify the person’s work… Readers will enjoy the individual stories; the repeated line at the end of each life story (‘Are you smart like… ?’) may even serve as an inspiration. The extensive back matter discussing the educational theory of multiple intelligences is for adults, but there’s plenty here for young people, too.