Septimus+Bean+and+his+amazing+machine

Septimus Bean and His Amazing Machine written by: Janet Quin-Harkin Illustrated by: Art Cumings Book review by: Samantha Stevenson Bibliographic Data: “Septimus Bean and His Amazing Machine” - Janet Quin-Harkin Publisher: Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (1979) A Parents Magazine READ ALOUD Original. Hardcover ISBN- 0-8193-0999-0 Pages: 36 Fiction - inventions (Stories in rhyme) Language: English

Author Biography: Janet Quin-Harkin's first children's story, "Peter Penny's Dance", was judged one of the outstanding books of 1976 by the New York Times. Her book Benjamin's Balloon was one of PMP's 1979 delights. Although she began to write as a small girl in England, she wanted to become a lion tamer or an opera singer. After her schooling however, she wrote plays for the BBC and then managed a rock group. It is her background in radio that she says gives her a great feeling for how words sound aside from the way they look on a page. "It is in the spirit that Septimus Bean skipped off my pen in Conroe, Texas!" - Janet Quin-Harkin. Artist Biography: "The biggest challenge in illustrating Septimus Bean," says Art Cumings," was designing the machine so that the pieces fit and made it seem almost like a living thing! Luckily there were great clues in the story to help work it out." Mr. Cumings has put together Septimus's machine with the same care and skill that he brought to his drawings for other children's books such as "Please Try to Remember the First of October"(Dr. Seuss),"Charlie's Pets" (Kathryn Ernest), and "A Good Fish Dinner"(Barbara K. Walker). Mr. Cumings is also a magazine illustrator too.

Book Summary: This book is not only a form of art in the illustrations but also a form of art in the writing in how the author Janet Quin-Harnet makes Septimus Bean's amazing machine come to life through the use of vivid descriptive words and alliterations. This book is set in medieval times where an inventor by the name of Septimus Bean brings his invention to the king and the queen. There is a catch though he has no idea what the machine does! So the Queen takes it upon herself to try a series of ideas to see if the machine could clean the castle or do the laundry. But as it turns out that all the machine can do is make a mess. So the final guess is that the machine could be a form of transportation for which the king can ride upon and so Septimus obliges the king and starts up the machine and it takes off in to the sky. After finally catching up with Septimus Bean the king discovers that the machine had been destroyed when it hit the ground. As a result the pieces of the machine had spread out over an entire clearing and a playground was created for all the children in the kingdom to play on. Review - why did you choose this book? I chose this book for it's literary rhyming and rhythmic patterns as well as the fact that I like the idea of the potential lesson plan one can create after reading this book to students of any age. I feel that this book shows students that there is no such thing as a mistake that something good can always come out of something others precieve as a negative.