Thoroughly researched, creatively presented, inspiring real-life role models for girls who love math.
This collective verse biography “honors women who used math to frame and solve problems, fix things, or understand the size of the universe.”
Atkins opens with German Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), the first woman to discover a comet, and closes with American Vera Rubin (1928-2016), an astronomer who proved the existence of dark matter. Throughout, she illustrates how each woman faced personal obstacles as well as gender bias but never allowed “insults or lack of faith to stop” her. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) revolutionized the nursing profession through use of medical statistics, and Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923) became the first female electrical engineer, registering 26 patents; both women were English. American geologist Marie Tharp (1920-2006) helped develop the first map of the entire ocean floor while her countrywoman mathematician Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) endured segregation as she calculated trajectories for NASA. At the U.S. Census Bureau, statistician Edna Lee Paisano (1948-2014) used math to “give everyone a fair chance.” With the exception of African American Johnson and Nez Perce Paisano, the women profiled are white. Presented chronologically in engaging verse with a feminist tone, the text artfully weaves scientific data and history with imagined “dialogue and sensory detail based on what’s known about the time, places, and questions” of these remarkable math mavens. A line drawing introduces each woman’s biography, and the “Women Who Widened Horizons” section summarizes their achievements.
Thoroughly researched, creatively presented, inspiring real-life role models for girls who love math. (author’s note, selected bibliography) (Verse biography. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6068-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Luminescent, just like the artwork it celebrates. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
Traumatized by his father’s recent death, a boy throws a brick at an old man who collects junk in his neighborhood and winds up on probation working for him.
Pearsall bases the book on a famed real work of folk art, the Throne of the Third Heaven, by James Hampton, a janitor who built his work in a garage in Washington, D.C., from bits of light bulbs, foil, mirrors, wood, bottles, coffee cans, and cardboard—the titular seven most important things. In late 1963, 13-year-old Arthur finds himself looking for junk for Mr. Hampton, who needs help with his artistic masterpiece, begun during World War II. The book focuses on redemption rather than art, as Hampton forgives the fictional Arthur for his crime, getting the boy to participate in his work at first reluctantly, later with love. Arthur struggles with his anger over his father’s death and his mother’s new boyfriend. Readers watch as Arthur transfers much of his love for his father to Mr. Hampton and accepts responsibility for saving the art when it becomes endangered. Written in a homespun style that reflects the simple components of the artwork, the story guides readers along with Arthur to an understanding of the most important things in life.
Luminescent, just like the artwork it celebrates. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-49728-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
An impressive sequel.
Boy and fox follow separate paths in postwar rebuilding.
A year after Peter finds refuge with former soldier Vola, he prepares to leave to return to his childhood home. He plans to join the Junior Water Warriors, young people repurposing the machines and structures of war to reclaim reservoirs and rivers poisoned in the conflict, and then to set out on his own to live apart from others. At 13, Peter is competent and self-contained. Vola marvels at the construction of the floor of the cabin he’s built on her land, but the losses he’s sustained have left a mark. He imposes a penance on himself, reimagining the story of rescuing the orphaned kit Pax as one in which he follows his father’s counsel to kill the animal before he could form a connection. He thinks of his heart as having a stone inside it. Pax, meanwhile, has fathered three kits who claim his attention and devotion. Alternating chapters from the fox’s point of view demonstrate Pax’s care for his family—his mate, Bristle; her brother; and the three kits. Pax becomes especially attached to his daughter, who accompanies him on a journey that intersects with Peter’s and allows Peter to not only redeem his past, but imagine a future. This is a deftly nuanced look at the fragility and strength of the human heart. All the human characters read as White. Illustrations not seen.
An impressive sequel. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-293034-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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