About the Kite
I used to love visiting the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia yearly on school trips and family outings. I was fascinated by the walk-through Giant Heart exhibit and spent hours exploring the museum's other interactive displays, ending with an enormous statue of Ben Franklin in the central rotunda. Years later, I watched my sons experience that same sense of wonder and excitement as they raced around the museum's exhibits.
That feeling of discovery and possibility stayed with me and shaped my approach to design and illustration. While creating the artwork that became the illustrations in my collection, I remembered the museum's exhibits and the story of Ben Franklin's famous kite experiment, where he proved his theories about conducting electrical energy using only a kite, a metal key, and the electrical current in the air during a thunderstorm. I realized that Ben Franklin's kite was an excellent metaphor and symbol to remind us that anything is possible when we approach each day with creativity and curiosity.
