Annal:1997 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction

A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder

Walter Wick

• 1997 Horn Book-nonfiction winner
• 1998 Orbis Pictus honor
• Score: 16.47

The most spectacular photographs ever created on the subject of water appear in this unique science book by Walter Wick. The camera stops the action and magnifies it so that all the amazing states of water can be observed—water as ice, rainbow, stream, frost, dew. Readers can examine a drop of water as it falls from a faucet, see a drop of water as it splashes on a hard surface, count the points of an actual snowflake, and contemplate how drops of water form clouds.

Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man

David A. Adler, Terry Widener

• 1997 Horn Book-nonfiction honor
• Score: 6.47

This biography traces Gehrig’s life, from childhood through his illustrious career with the Yankees to his struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and his tragic death at age thirty-seven. Expressive illustrations capture the strength, modesty, and dignity for which this remarkable man will always be remembered.

Leonardo da Vinci

Diane Stanley

• 1997 Orbis Pictus winner
• 1997 Horn Book-nonfiction honor
• Score: 16.47

Born in 1452 to a peasant woman and a country gentleman, Leonardo da Vinci possessed one of the most astonishing minds the world has ever known. He was an inventor whose imagination reached centuries beyond his own time. He brought a sublime artistry to science and a dramatic realism to art, crowning the Renaissance with his glittering vision.

Denied a more noble profession by his illegitimate birth, as a boy Leonardo was apprenticed to a famous artist. He quickly surpassed his teacher, hut his passionate interests went far beyond art. Fascinated with the secrets of nature and the human body, he carried out his own dissections and experiments. He filled thousands of pages in his notebooks with plans and designs for inventions as varied as a submarine, an air cooling system, “glasses to see the moon large,” and even a flying machine!

But while he was employed by princes, popes, and kings, Leonardo’s personal fortune was never great. He traveled all of Italy in search of patronage. He found a rival in Michelangelo and a friend in a wily young diplomat named Machiavelli. He served…