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Earmuffs for Everyone!

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By DeeDee
 Cover image for Earmuffs for everyone! : how Chester Greenwood became known as the inventor of earmuffs
Earmuffs for Everyone
by Meghan McCarthy
Simon & Schuster, 2015. Biography. Unpaginated

Chester Greenwood is considered the inventor of earmuffs.  There is even a Chester Greenwood day that is celebrated every year in his home town of Farmington, Maine.  But did Greenwood really invent earmuffs?  Well, not really.  Other people invented things that were like earmuffs, but Greenwood made an improvement that helped the earmuffs work better and be more popular.   McCarthy includes other examples of inventors who are credited with inventing something, when they really only made critical improvements on someone else's idea.  The book is illustrated with colorful cartoon drawings of people and places mentioned in the text. McCarthy includes a insightful end note about her research journey. This is an interesting picture book biography that gives a real world example of how history is not always clear cut.

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