A respectful, important tribute to an instrumental rocket scientist.
Prolific STEM writer Slade spotlights Mary Sherman Morgan (1921-2004) and her role in the launch of the United States’ first successful satellite.
As a young girl, Mary’s parents delayed her education and filled her days with grueling chores on their North Dakota farm. Despite starting school at age 8, she excelled academically and bucked her family by putting herself through two years of college, where she majored in chemistry. She accepted lab jobs in Ohio and California during the war years and diligently researched fuel-oxidizer combinations to determine how they affected flight, becoming an expert in her male-dominated field. In 1953, Sherman Morgan was appointed leader of a “top secret project” to create the fuel for a rocket called Juno I that would carry America’s first satellite, Explorer I, into space. Slade ably details Sherman Morgan’s quest to determine which combination of fuels would provide the stability and energy to propel the rocket into space. With little help from her two inexperienced assistants, Morgan ultimately invented a fuel concoction known as hydyne that, after two years of field testing, was successfully used to power Juno I. Comport’s lively illustrations—rendered using color pencil, traditional collage, digital collage, and digital paint—combine dramatic perspectives, facsimiles of space-race ephemera, and collaged STEM equations, enhancing Slade’s spry narrative. Excellent backmatter includes an author’s note in which Slade acknowledges her creative use of “known facts” to plug research gaps. All characters present White.
A respectful, important tribute to an instrumental rocket scientist. (chronology, further facts, selected bibliography, photos) (Picture-book biography. 8-12)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68437-241-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
A celebration of progressive Judaism and an inclusive primer on Jews making a difference in the world.
This wide-ranging collection of short biographies highlights 36 Jewish figures from around the globe and across centuries.
Explicitly pushing back against homogenous depictions of Jewish people, the authors demonstrate the ethnic, racial, and gender diversity of Jews. Each spread includes a brief biography paired with a stylized portrait reminiscent of those in Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (2016). A pull quote or sidebar accompanies each subject; sidebars include “Highlighting Jewish Paralympic Athletes,” “Jewish Stringed Music,” and “Ethiopian Jews in Israel.” Kleinrock and Pritchard’s roster of subjects makes a compelling case for the vastness and variety of Jewish experience—from a contemporary Ethiopian American teen to a 16th-century Portuguese philanthropist—while still allowing them to acknowledge better-known figures. The entry on Raquel Montoya-Lewis, an associate justice of the Washington Supreme Court and an enrolled member of the Pueblo Isleta Indian tribe, discusses her mission to reimagine criminal justice for Indigenous people; the sidebar name-checks Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The bios are organized around themes of Jewish principles such as Pikuach Nefesh (translated from the Hebrew as “to save a life”) and Adam Yachid (translated as the “unique value of every person”); each section includes an introduction to an organization that centers diverse Jewish experiences.
A celebration of progressive Judaism and an inclusive primer on Jews making a difference in the world. (resources) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780063285712
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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