Santiago Saw Things Differently: Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Artist, Doctor, Father of Neuroscience

by Christine Iverson, Luciano Lozano (Illustrator)

Overview

“An introduction to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, an artist and medical researcher who made a crucial discovery. . . . Brightly illuminates a brilliant and multitalented yet unjustly obscure scientist.” —Kirkus Reviews

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 his 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536238334
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/15/2024
Series:	Curious Minds
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	7.06(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Christine Iverson is a physical therapist with a strong interest in neural pathways. She holds a BS in history from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a doctoral degree in physical therapy from Baylor University, and an M.Ed. with a focus in children’s literature from Pennsylvania State University. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Luciano Lozano is a Spanish author, illustrator, and graphic artist. He is the creator of several picture books, including Mayhem at the Museum: A Book in Pictures, and the illustrator of many others, including I (Don’t) Like Snakes by Nicola Davies. He lives in Spain.

Editorial Reviews

Reproductions of Ramón y Cajal’s drawings appear on relevant pages of the book, alongside Lozano’s handsome digital illustrations, which feature expressive line drawings brightened with solid colors and occasional patterns. A picture book showing the value of the A in the STEAM field.
—Booklist

An introduction to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, an artist and medical researcher who made a crucial discovery about how our nervous systems work. . . . 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

From the Publisher

09/25/2023

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.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/29/2024

Gr 1–3—In the mountains of Spain, in his grandfather's shop, Santiago Ramón y Cajal as a boy didn't see dust motes flying into the breeze, but elements that "sparkled and soared in a kaleidoscope of motion." Determining that their son and his insistence on drawing everything at every moment did not have art in his future, his parents directed him to a study of medicine. For readers expecting this stubborn, talented person to break free of this directive, a plot twist: the boy went on to study the fibers and paths of the brain and became the founder of neuroscience. Through his drawings, he found the patterns and structures that made it possible for others to heal brains. He won the Nobel Prize for this work, sharing the stage with another who openly disparaged and remained skeptical of his work. Ramón y Cajal not only saw things differently, but he allowed others to see, too, and changed the course of medicine. The illustrations are almost naïve at first, in the straight lines and round heads of children's cartoon characters. In a muted palette of slate blues and goldenrod, with bursts of salmon and mint green, the artwork gives way to a more realistic, natural look that conveys a sense of history. And then, with the overlay of Ramón y Cajal's own work, the contrast is splendid. The drawings of cells, neural paths, and fibers are perfect to pore over. Author's note and references consulted are included in the back matter. VERDICT Whether for the art shelves or the science collection, this biography cannot go deep, but it covers the surface events of Santiago Ramón y Cajal's journey in a way that is breathtaking, unbelievable, and inspiring.—Kimberly Olson Fakih

School Library Journal

2023-08-26
An introduction to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, an artist and medical researcher who made a crucial discovery about how our nervous systems work.

Iverson drafts a portrait of a visionary Spanish scientist who, compulsively drawing and painting from childhood on but compelled by his father to study medicine, was therefore well equipped to see patterns in networks of neurons and axons that others could not. He described and depicted them well enough to change scientific thinking on the way to earning a Nobel Prize in 1906. Lozano incorporates numerous examples of his subject’s actual artwork into scenes of a determined-looking lad in short pants finding ways to make art (with pen, brush, and, later, a camera) in the face of opposition from both his father and his teachers. Later, as an adult, he translated images seen through a microscope into complex but lucid arrangements of cells and connections. Along with more information about nerve cells’ structures and functions, the author offers readers further details about the life and accomplishments of, as she dubs him, the “Father of Neuroscience,” in an afterword—including an amusing anecdote about how his co-Nobelist, Camillo Golgi, spent most of his acceptance speech at the ceremony arguing that his colleague’s theories were wrong. Some nerve!

Brightly illuminates a brilliant and multitalented yet unjustly obscure scientist. (bibliography, photographs) (Picture-book biography. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews