Santiago Saw Things Differently: Santiago Ramón Y Cajal, Artist, Doctor, Father of Neuroscience
by Christine Iverson (Author) Luciano Lozano (Illustrator)
Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s father, the village doctor, wants Santiago to be a doctor. He discourages his willful son’s love and aptitude for art. But drawing and painting are as necessary to Santiago as breathing, so when his father confiscates his art supplies, the boy finds a way to draw in secret. He draws on doors, gates, and walls, and to the neighbors, his drawings are a nuisance. But Santiago sees things differently. He’s an artist and always will be, even after he grows up and becomes a doctor. And art helps him discover what no one else could: branching connections within the nervous system. Debut author Christine Iverson’s vivid text evokes Santiago’s pioneering nature, while Luciano Lozano’s stunning visual narrative incorporates Santiago’s actual art, including remarkable drawings of neural pathways. A self-portrait, facts about neurons, and the science behind Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s 1906 Nobel Prize for Medicine round out this brilliant account of a boy who shaped his scientific fate as an artist.
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Publishers Weekly
Born in Spain, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) was the son of a doctor who wanted him to be one, too. But the boy, an artist at heart, was regularly locked into rooms for drawing in his schoolbooks. When he and his father slipped into a graveyard at night to study bones, he discovered one place where art intersects with medicine: "He saw the human body as a work of art." Obtaining a microscope, he began to draw nerve fibers in the brain, his drafting ability allowing him to follow intricate networks of what looked like "trunks, branches, and leaves." But they never grow together, he realized; instead, they transmit messages across the gaps between them. For his work demystifying the nervous system, he won the Nobel Prize. Iverson writes with delicacy, evoking childhood moments that were formative for Santiago: "The room was lit by a wisp of light... just enough light for drawing." Illustrations in an antiqued palette of coppers and grays by Lozano (Mayhem at the Museum) have a stylized cartoon quality, portraying the young protagonist as doll-like with an upturned nose. Several of Cajal's original drawings are included; back matter concludes. Ages 5-9. (Nov.)
Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.Review quotes
—Booklist "Brightly illuminates a brilliant and multitalented yet unjustly obscure scientist."
—Kirkus Reviews Iverson writes with delicacy, evoking childhood moments that were formative for Santiago.
—Publishers Weekly
JNF051030 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Science & Nature | Anatomy & Physiology
Artists
Spain
Ramaon y Cajal, Santiago
Neuroscientists
