While this book gets the job done, here’s hoping livelier titles on this fascinating personality will appear soon.
This simple biography of African American NASA computer Dorothy Vaughan contrasts her intelligence and initiative with the nonsensical rules of segregation in her time.
Vaughan is introduced as a woman who worked as a human computer during the 1940s and 1950s. Her “unusual” accomplishment of attending college as an African American woman was followed by a job teaching in segregated schools, which didn’t pay much. When she saw that the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was hiring human computers, she applied and got the job. At Langley, the engineers who were testing airplanes were mostly men (depicted as white in the illustrations), and they needed the help of human computers, who were mostly women. In the middle of the story, segregation is introduced as “one thing that didn’t make sense” at Langley and throughout Vaughan’s life. But “Dorothy didn’t let this stop her. She worked hard. She worked smart.” After becoming a supervisor, she decided to learn about the new mechanical computer. She became an expert in computer code and taught others. Vaughan’s accomplishments are truly impressive, and this is one of the first picture books to focus on this mathematician, one of those featured in Hidden Figures. Unfortunately, the text relates her story as a recitation of facts, and the pictures lack variety and appear static. This book is one of four introducing young readers to women in STEM; simultaneously publishing are Fossil Huntress (about paleontologist Mary Leakey), Human Computer (about engineer Mary Jackson), and Space Adventurer (about astronaut Bonnie Dunbar).
While this book gets the job done, here’s hoping livelier titles on this fascinating personality will appear soon. (activities, timeline, glossary) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61930-556-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nomad Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments.
The junior senator from California introduces family and friends as everyday superheroes.
The endpapers are covered with cascades of, mostly, early childhood snapshots (“This is me contemplating the future”—caregivers of toddlers will recognize that abstracted look). In between, Harris introduces heroes in her life who have shaped her character: her mom and dad, whose superpowers were, respectively, to make her feel special and brave; an older neighbor known for her kindness; grandparents in India and Jamaica who “[stood] up for what’s right” (albeit in unspecified ways); other relatives and a teacher who opened her awareness to a wider world; and finally iconic figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley who “protected people by using the power of words and ideas” and whose examples inspired her to become a lawyer. “Heroes are…YOU!” she concludes, closing with a bulleted Hero Code and a timeline of her legal and political career that ends with her 2017 swearing-in as senator. In group scenes, some of the figures in the bright, simplistic digital illustrations have Asian features, some are in wheelchairs, nearly all are people of color. Almost all are smiling or grinning. Roe provides everyone identified as a role model with a cape and poses the author, who is seen at different ages wearing an identifying heart pin or decoration, next to each.
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984837-49-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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