In a heightened voice both dramatic and romantic, Atkins tells 12 stories of women who did amazing things. Jeanne Baret was the first woman to sail around the world, but her tale is relatively unknown: Nobody knows exactly what her last name was, or the name of the village where she died in 1816, or even precisely when she was born in France. Florence von Sass Baker accompanied her husband’s search for the source of the Nile—after he rescued her from white slavery in Hungary. Elisabeth Casteret explored the caves of the Pyrenees even while pregnant, describing crystal caves as “like being inside a diamond.” Junko Tabei answers the title query by climbing Mt. Everest (called Chomolungma, the mother goddess of the world, in Nepal). Sailing around the world alone, reaching the South Pole and exploring the ocean depths are a few more of these astonishing women’s quests, and while Atkins’s tone can get a little wearing, the truth is that these mostly unknown women accomplished extraordinary feats. Great for school reports. (author’s note, timeline, bibliography) (Collective biography. 10+)
