Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought DIFFERENT by Karen Blumenthal

Finalist – YALSA Award for Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction

This book is about Steve Jobs’s life. On the back of the book, there are seven steps of Steve Jobs’s life. These steps are: Iconoclast, Inventor, Visionary, Genius, Adopted, Dropout, and Fired. There is more content in the book after “Fired,” but that is all of the seven “steps.” One of the most important key points of his life is making Apple in his dad’s garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. There are three stories of his life. The first story is “The journey is the reward.” The second story is “Real artists ship.” The third story is “And one more thing.”

Some important people who come out in this book are Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, John Lasseter, and Laurene Powell. First, Steve Wozniak is Steve Jobs’s friend and is also known as another computer genius. He also worked at Apple when it started. Mike Markkula was the first major investor of the company Apple. John Lasseter was the head of animation at Pixar and inspired Steve Jobs.Lastly, Laurene Powell was Steve Jobs’s wife for 20 years and helped him a lot during his cancer illness.

I want to be a CEO of a robotic company, and I think this book will help me learn crucial things that CEOs should have as traits. Especially Steve Jobs’s life, because even though he was different, his company and his job as CEO were a success for him.

I will tell you my top eight favorite quotes he said. (These quotes might not be included in the actual book.) The first is “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” The second one is “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” The third one is “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” The fourth one is “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?” The fifth one is “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Sixth one is “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” The seventh one is “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time. The last quote is “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is better than two doubles.”

Now for basic information about this book. There are 22 chapters in this book, and there are 263 pages. But after reading the actual story, there are Timeline, Author’s Note, Bibliography, Notes, Glossary, Index, and Photo Credits. To me, this story was very interesting and fun. There are some pictures in the book. There were not a lot of full-page pictures, but there were some small pictures. II think this book should be read when the reader is at the end of 6th grade or at the beginning of 7th grade. Because the Lexile level of this book is 1110L.