WHAT ARE YOU FIGURING NOW? – A biography of Benjamin Banneker

Written by Jeri Chase Ferris
Illustrated by Amy Johnson
Published by Lerner Books, Minneapolis
First published in 1988, now in its 21st printing

A National Science Teachers Association/Children’s Book Council Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children

California Readers Collection

Available at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon

Benjamin Fr.... oops, not Franklin. Benjamin BANNEKER built the first wooden clock in America, was a mathematician and astronomer and musician (flute), wrote more almanacs than Benjamin Franklin did, and helped lay out our new capital city of Washington, D.C.

He was a free black farmer at a time when many black people in the new United States were held as slaves. Even George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners, as we know.