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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

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.

acqq 10y ago
> 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.

acqq 10y ago

> 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.