You know, Now & Ben was a decent book, and it contained several, "huh, I never knew that," factoids within its pages. The pictures were certainly adequate, and did a fine job of illustrating many of Franklin's inventions to children.My niece was interested in this entire book, but she is a lover of non-fiction, and she's always been interested in science and technology. My nephew was significantly less impressed with this book, but he's only four, has no idea who Benjamin Franklin was, and had never even heard of some of these inventions before. That said, he was pretty intrigued by the pages about lightning rods and odometers, but he did make a point to inform me that, "that book was too boring for me." Well, I really didn't expect it to make too much of a mark on him--this one was targeted at my niece.
When all is said and done, some kids may find this book to be interesting, but I bet the book would be put to best use in the hands of a teacher. Not only does it illustrate where some common items came from, but it can also be used in history class to show that not all of America's founding fathers were boring old guys. A creative teacher could use this one to really teach science or history in intersting ways.