I've never met David Elzey at Guys Lit Wire, but he must be one hunk of a blogger. Every year, and I mean every year, I break up fights among my (all-female) organizers over him. I saw him first! You had him last year! MEOW. Then there was the year two organizers duked it out while a third went behind their backs to nab him.
So, is this the George Clooney of book geeks? Who is this guy?
Well, he happens to run one of the few group blogs that caters primarily to what teen boys read. He writes spellbinding essays on how to write for boys. And he writes reviews of books that are page-turners (pixel turners?) all by themselves.
Feynman
by Jim Ottaviani
First Second Books
Elzey's take on Feynman, a graphic novel for teens, gets in your face about why it really shouldn't be as captivating a book as it is. It's about a physicist, for Einstein's sake. And then he heartily piles on what's so amazing about the Manhattan Project member who went on to solve the mystery of why the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and who apparently could crack safes and play some mean Brazilian drums:
The joy of reading about the life of physicist Richard Feynman, in any format, is that he was the original out-of-the-box thinker. He retained his child-like sense of wonder and his desire to figure things out and applied them to science the same way that artists and writers apply them to their craft. Following the unconventional and peripatetic life of an unconventional thinker provides an fascinating example of the rewards that come from following your dreams in any field. That Feynman had a sense of humor to match his sense of wonder is a bonus, and despite his preference for research over lecturing he was nonetheless brilliant showman.