The life story of Albert Einstein, the man who opened the Pandora’s box of nuclear energy, is one of the great parables of our age. It’s a hopeful tale of a late bloomer who triumphed spectacularly over a youthful reputation as a klutz and nerd – and it’s also a tragedy about an ethical scientist who helped unleash the most catastrophic misery on the world since the Inquisition: the nuclear bomb.

Last season Frieda Wishinsky’s What’s the Matter with Albert retold Einstein’s story in picture-book form for young readers. Equally engagingly, Elizabeth MacLeod’s new biography in Kids Can’s Snapshot series uses a magazine-style layout. MacLeod, a Toronto children’s writer, has already taken on L.M. Montgomery, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright brothers. Now she deftly places Einstein in the contexts of scientific discovery and 20th-century culture.

The richly visual format accommodates both devoted bookworms and kids whose reading is confined mostly to web sites – instead of clicking a link, they have only to turn the page. MacLeod’s text is lively and direct, and she has a knack for making challenging terms like “theoretical physicist” and “electromagnetism” seem like child’s play. Besides a cartoon Albert to guide readers through the high points, there are more than 25 photos of him at various stages, from the velvet-suited child to the shaggy-headed senior scientist in a very cool black leather jacket, scribbling equations. Every page is crammed with intriguing facts, including the little-known one that early in his career as a patent-office clerk, he approved the mould for Toblerone chocolates.