“Mother, why does the teakettle lid bob up and down when the water boils?” five-year-old Henry asked.

Mrs. Ford tried to explain this everyday occurrence to her son.

“Mother, why do the hands of the clock go round and round?”

Again the patient Mrs. Ford tried to satisfy her son’s curiosity.

Young Henry Ford was curious about everything. “How does this work? Why does this happen? What can we do about this?”

These are the kinds of questions that Henry Ford asked in the late 1860’s and in the 1870’s when he grew up on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan. Henry was curious about animals and plants, but he was most curious about tools and machines, and always had his pockets filled with nuts and bolts.

Henry’s early curiosity often got him into trouble. Once he took his brother’s butterfly toy apart to see how it worked. His father scolded him and sent him to bed, but he was not ready to give up. He lay awake, waiting until his parents and grandparents went to bed. Then he crept down the stairs and put the butterfly together again.

Everyone said that young Henry was a born mechanic. He studied how things worked. Then he invented gadgets to make work faster and easier, using any materials he had. For example, he invented a foot pedal for a corn sheller to save turning it by hand.

Young Henry was always full of ideas about ways to help people work and live better. He constantly tried to find easier and faster ways of doing things on farms. He looked forward to the time when he might devise easier and faster ways of traveling.

Throughout life Henry Ford combined his ideas with his great mechanical ability to modernize ways of doing things. First he experimented with the internal combustion engine, or gasoline engine. Then he began to build automobiles, using gasoline engines for power. Also, he began to make tractors to take the place of horses on farms.

In this book Hazel B. Aird and Catherine Ruddiman have told the fascinating story of this young boy with ideas. They have captured the personality of one of the modern world’s most important creators and have re-created vividly the world in which he lived. Children will read this captivating story with delight and come to appreciate better the importance of nature and machines.

From the dust jacket