Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist, a song writer, a recording artist, a filmmaker, an inventor and a news reporter, He even had a vaudeville act where he would tell stories and draw his cartoons on stage.But he wasn’t just any cartoonist. His humor was skewed in much the same way as early TV pioneer Ernie Kovacs. If you were a fan of Mad Magazine in its “golden age”, you saw tributes to Goldberg without knowing it. In fact Goldberg would have fit right in with the “usual crazy gang of idiots”.Last month a traveling exhibit on Goldberg and his life opened at the National Museum of Jewish American History in Philadelphia and I learn lots of things about the man. I even got to meet his granddaughter (Jennifer George) – the author of this book - and see objects I never knew Goldberg was involved in.While there were early comic drawings from as far back as 1910 on the walls and in the cases, the “contraption” at the entrance to the exhibit which was a typical “Rube Goldberg device” using complicated mechanical objects perform something simple, are what drew the young children I saw there. (see the photo of George at the entrance) And the exhibit even had a dedicated play area for children to understand the principles of motion that make Goldberg’s devices work. There were a number of books on Goldberg in that area and this one of them.This un-paginated 40-page hardbound book from the “Young Readers” division of the art book publisher Abrams contains 14 devices which solve simple daily events that children go through every day – getting dressed, brushing their teeth, doing homework – and show how the simple task can be accomplished by a multi-step process that eventually gets the job done.The drawings are not Goldbergs’s but rather new and colorful ones by illustrator Ed Steckley. There is also an Introduction by George “I will offer a warning if you do get this delightful book to share with your children, and are opening it for the first time. When you get to the last “project” “A Simple Way to Go To Bed”, you will feel like two pages are stuck together and had not been cut. But that is NOT the case (as I found out the hard way – This is a portion of the book where the left and right pages are folded in so that you can open them and see a four-panel of a young Rube in his bed dreaming of more inventions. Open this carefully.Based on reviews here from parents (I have no children) kids love this book so I’ll go along with them. I see this a holiday gift for my five-year old grand-niece and will have fun reading it with her as she follows along.And if “The Art of Rube Goldberg” comes to your area, I encourage you to visit it. And bring your children.I hope you found this review both informative and helpful.Steve Ramm“Anything Phonographic”