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
BOOK REVIEW
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
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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