Sharon Cameron was awarded the 2009 Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators for her debut novel, The Dark Unwinding. When not writing Sharon can be found thumbing dusty tomes, shooting her longbow, or indulging in her lifelong search for secret passages.
Release Date: September 1, 2012
Publisher: Scholastic
Pre-order: Amazon / IndieBound / Barnes & Noble
Where to find Sharon...
Magical Science
“We live in a fantastic age, Miss Tulman, at the edge of a time where nothing is beyond us, not the moon, or the stars or even life itself.”
-Ben Aldridge, The Dark Unwinding
And at the very beginning of that fantastic age was clockwork, both useful, as in accurate timekeeping, and fanciful, like the pianoforte playing automaton that Uncle Tully creates in The Dark Unwinding. That automaton was based on one called “The Musician,” made by Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss clockmaker (more info here: http://bit.ly/9zhB6m). His automaton is not a music box, it actually plays the instrument, each finger pushing the key in perfect time, all while blinking, swaying, and even breathing. Another of his creations, called “The Writer” is considered to be an ancestor of the computer, as it can be “programmed” to write any message up to forty characters. Each of these machines is made of thousands of handmade parts and each is a feat of engineering unto itself.
But what sets Uncle Tully’s workshop apart are not the inventions that “come from someone else’s head,” as Uncle Tully would say, but the inventions that took the technology of the time into a completely new direction, a direction not historically discovered until much later in the century. Uncle Tully’s “magically” balancing boat, the enormous dragon that stands on a pencil point, and his clockwork fish are all inventions with working schematics (designed by my über-smart husband!) employing technology that went on to be used in the Hubble telescope, the navigation systems of airplanes, the iPhone and even the Wii. The secret of this technology is actually shown in the schematic drawing of the clockwork fish at the beginning of The Dark Unwinding (also drawn by my über-smart husband!) and can be seen…if one knows what to look for!
The Victorian age was a time of hope like no other, when we began to realize that life did not have to exist as it had always been. We could have light without fire, machines that acted like humans, cheat death by eliminating a microscopic germ, and we began the technological journey that eventually led us to space. Science must have seemed like magic to a Victorian. And when you think of wireless communication and nanotechnology, it’s clear that we’re still working toward the same sort of magic today.
Follow the Tour
August 26 - The Book Vortex
August 27 - Book Thoughts by Marielle
August 28 - Starting the Next Chapter
August 29 - Denim Jacket Librarian
August 30 - The Housework Can Wait
August 31 - The Compulsive Reader
September 1 - RELEASE DAY!
September 2 - Magnet 4 Books’ Reviews
September 3 - The Ninja Librarian
September 4 - A Reader of Fictions
September 5 - Wastepaper Prose
September 6 - Through the Looking Glass
September 7 - Katie’s Book Blog
September 8 - The Cozy Reader
September 9 - Mission to Read
Thank you so much for participating in the tour Jessica!
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome! It's not every day we get to talk about magical science :)
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