Rosie Revere, Engineer

A picture book written by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts called Rosie Revere, Engineer is about a little girl wanting to become an engineer. The illustrations are done in watercolor, pen ink, and are a mix of retrospective and contemporary drawings. Rosie is a curious little girl that collects things others throw away and she builds “gadgets and gizmos” in her attic. She is very proud of her creations that she shows proudly to her aunts and uncles. Yet, one day she creates a machine that keeps snakes off her uncle’s head, but he laughs which hurts Rosie’s feelings. Having been embarrassed from her uncle’s laughter, Rosie refuses to build any more inventions until one day her great-great-great aunt Rose shows up. Her aunt tells Rosie tells stories of her building airplanes but is sad because she never got to fly one. Rosie comes up with an idea to build her aunt an airplane, but her aunt ends of laughing at her after her contraption fails to stay in the air. She wants to leave out of embarrassment, but her great aunt grabs her and hugs her and explains to her that it was not a failure because the invention flew. Her aunt inspires Rosie to continue to keep inventing because true failure is giving up.

Beaty, A. (2013). (D. Roberts, Illus.) Rosie Revere, Engineer. Abrams.