ALA Booklist (Sat Feb 01 00:00:00 CST 1997)

Beginning with animal crackers and ending with the zipper, this book alphabetically lists a number of inventions and briefly describes how they came into being. Among the items noted are blue jeans, doughnuts, matches, miniature golf, and Scrabble. The boldly colored dust jacket, featuring a popsicle (discovered by a boy who left his soda pop mix and water out in the cold overnight), will draw readers; but oddly, there are no illustrations inside, just a paragraph or so of text per page. Interesting for browsers. (Reviewed February 15, 1997)

Horn Book (Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1997)

In just a few paragraphs per topic, Wulffson sums up the origins of 114 common items, presented in alphabetical order. Though some of the historical tidbits highlight the inventive spirit of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Americans, page after page of the same type of information, with no illustrations might become tiresome for all but trivia fans.

Kirkus Reviews

Wulffson (Time Fix, 1994) sketches out the origins of 99 inventions in this entertaining volume of trivia that may launch further research for reports. There is no depth on any topic, nor descriptions of inventors' lives, nor information on how patents are obtained. There are few child inventors included, so the title may mislead; nevertheless, one good example of youthful ingenuity is that of Blaise Pascal, who was 19 when he created a counting machine to assist his father, involved daily in routine calculations. Readers learn that some dice were loaded in ancient Egypt; that baseball caps evolved from imitations of Civil War military hats; that flyswatters must have holes to be effective; that some inventions might have flopped without a push in the public-relations department. Such stories are well-suited to sharing. (Nonfiction. 9-14)"