Hawking

A gift for my husband, who loves this particular author.

Gift for my grandson. Like the graphic novel format. Grandson admires Hawking very much.

Wonderful book!

If your science and biography sections don't have an Ottaviani/Myrick section yet, you may want to get to work on that. This is the second collaboration the two have worked on; the first being Feynman, a graphic biography on physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. Hawking is in parts biography and science comic for teens and adults, moving easily back and forth between Stephen Hawking's life story and explanations of physics, black holes, and the universe at large. The story begins with Hawking's birth, 300 days to the day after Galileo's death, wanders through his early adolescence as a teen who speaks "Hawkingese" and appears socially awkward; his marriage to Jane Hawking and his diagnosis with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS; his research and ultimate pop culture fame, and his later years, second marriage, and the degenerative path of his disease. First and foremost, this is a story about science; there are pages devoted to discussions between defining voices, including Newton, Faraday, and Einstein, about cosmology, light, and gravity. Jim Ottaviani captures Hawking's voice - the graphic novel is narrated by a fictional Hawking - and shows up a glimpse of the man behind the legend. Award-winning illustrator Leland Myrick's artwork is unfussy, providing scientific sketches as easily as he captures Stephen Hawking's wry smirk and his ability to disappear into a cloud of physics, even in a crowded room. The end of Hawking's story will catch readers right in the feelings - I choked up a bit. An author's note discusses how graphic novels are a good medium for narrative nonfiction, and I couldn't agree more. Jim Ottaviani is an New York Times-bestselling author whose graphic biographies also include The Imitation Game (Alan Turing) and Primates (Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas), so the man knows how to plot out a graphic biography. There is a nice list of references that will give interested readers even more material to look through. I love graphic novel bios - they're a great way to get tweens, teens, and adults interested in reading biographies, and the graphic medium allows for great explanations of topics that may be difficult in solid print (like physics!). If you have readers who have aged up from Science Comics, hand them Hawking. A definite must-add to your (growing!) graphic novel biographies.

This graphic novel biography of Stephen Hawking did not limit itself to his life. It also spent time covering the history of his science and some of the development of the cosmological theories which he developed in his lifetime. The skill of the author us in the graphic novel as such a powerful medium for a biography is unsurprising considering that he has written several others explaining such things as the history of space flight, women in primatology, and (I recently found out and want to buy) Feynman. The main character was, of course Stephen Hawking, and the author and illustrator did a superb job of showing his physical decline while not making it (except of a few pages) a central figure in the book. The other major character was Hawking's first wife Jane and I found myself wondering at the amount of access that the author must have had. Jane was portrayed as truly in love and devoted to a man who was often distracted and nearly dismissive of her. Such is the skill of the graphic narrative that you can feel the the relationship descend into problems before ultimately ending in divorce without it being explicitly stated. To me, the book does an excellent job of portraying a life of an icon without idolization, of presenting difficult science understandably (as Hawking eventually was able to do himself), and of telling the story of an important physicist in a way that is approachable by people from early high school on up. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about Stephen Hawking than his brief stints on the Simpsons and Big Bang Theory. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a prerelease version of this book.

Amazing comic version of the famous physicist. The story is well written and the illustrations are superb! A great addition to our kids library.

Stephen Hawking's life and career were rather amazing. He grew up in England as a brilliant student with an indefatigable sense of humor. Weirdly, he wasn't a particularly hard-working student, often coasting by on his intelligence, which let him finish assignments at the last minute. When he was twenty-one, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, better known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's Disease. The prognosis was death in a few months or a few years at most. That prediction was in 1963; he lived to 2018. He overcame a lot of odds. The disease was slow to ravage his body. He was independently mobile for a long time, though nowadays everyone pictures him in his customized wheelchair with a machine to help him speak. His mind was alway vibrant and he did a lot of work in theoretical physics and cosmology. Those fields were considered a fertile ground since a lot of progress still had to be made. Einstein and quantum physics were big leaps forward, but reconciling the two, and both of them with more classical conceptions of science, along with developing new concepts, still had to be done. Hawking worked with many other scientists and scholars to produce many advancements in our understanding of the universe. Hawking also lived a full life. He had two children. He traveled quite a bit, visiting universities and laboratories around the world. After he became a celebrity, traveling became harder as he would be more noticed and more likely to be approached. He took it all as it came. This book covers a bit of everything, with most of the focus on Hawking's science. I enjoyed it to a degree but felt like there wasn't enough depth. Perhaps Hawking's life and scientific contributions are too much for a graphic novel treatment. Or I just needed to think of this as a general overview. Slightly recommended.