Picture Book Review: The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity by Amy Alznauer

Image: Candlewick Press

The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity: a tale of the genius Ramanujan by Amy Alznauer. Illustrated by Daniel Miyares. unpgd. Candlewick Press, April, 2020. 9780763690489. Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

People who know me, know I am math averse. It's a trauma that goes all the way back to my childhood cringing under the weight of my father's impatience when I couldn't understand any concept he tried to "teach" me. I am frequently pulled from the library to cover classes and my greatest dread is covering a math class. I once sorta kiddingly told my VP, "Sending me to cover math is child abuse." 

But I do love reading about mathematicians! The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity is a beautifully illustrated picture book biography of a self-taught mathematical genius told sparely and accessibly. Ramanujan was born in British-ruled India in the late 1800s. He took a while to talk and would quietly arrange copper pots instead of interacting. His grandfather taught him how to count and that seemed to make a connection for soon he was talking and asking such unanswerable questions as, "What is small?" or "What is big?" He went to school at age five but soon grew bored when his teachers would not/ could not answer his incessant questions. He tried school over and over rarely encountering a teacher who appreciated his genius. He flunked out of college, had trouble finding jobs, yet still he wrote equations in his notebooks and pondered what is big and small. He sent a letter to a distinguished professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, who invited him to sail to England to discuss number theory. 

The palette of the ink illustrations is cheery with splashes of red and yellow to draw the eye. Several illustrations sport equations. All evocatively depict Ramanujan immersed in another world. He seems to glow in each spread. In the Author's Note at the end of the book, readers learn that Ramanujan died young, at the age of 32. There's a bibliography but not one that young readers will find easily accessible. The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity seems to be the first and it's terrific.