Laurie Wallmark's WOMEN IN STEM Series: A Giveaway!

Hold on to your hats, readers. This post features WOMEN IN STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics), a series of picture book biographies that will blow you away. I've linked each of my brief comments below to more thorough reviews on my Goodreads account about individual titles. Author Laurie Wallmark has introduced readers to each of her "subjects" as fully formed individual girls/women whose lives and accomplishments pop off the page. Each book also provides back matter that is head and shoulders above routine documentation to appeal and inform in its own right. 

ADA LOVELACE AND THE THINKING MACHINE (Laurie Wallmark, April Chu. Creston Books, 2015

From my review:

There is so much to enjoy in this biography that spans, literally, cradle to grave and centuries beyond. Modern young readers will be inspired by her brilliant insights and accomplishments despite the limits of technology during her lifetime. Even though hers was a privileged and elegant life, Ada overcame struggles that will resonate with many (an absent father, several years of disability due to measles). 

HEDY LAMARR'S DOUBLE LIFE: Hollywood Legend and Brilliant Inventor (Laurie Wallmark, Katy Wu. Sterling CHildren's Books 2019)

From my review:

Characteristically deep research marks Hedy's life story, developed in appealing narrative with brief revelations about her childhood curiosity in Vienna, patented inventions, and on to her fame as a Hollywood star. She and friend George Antheil invested countless hours of secret effort in developing specialized equipment that allowed naval signals to evade detection during World War II. Their contributions to saving lives and winning the war remained top secret for many years and are still used today. 

Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code (Laurie Wallmark, Katy Wu, Sterling Children's Books. 2017)

From my review:

I was eager to read more about Hopper, and this deeply researched account is filled with "grace" and humor. I vividly recall watching an evening news tribute to Grace Hopper on the occasion of her SECOND retirement from the US Navy at the age of eighty. That news profile recounted her transformational role in computer coding, in war service, and in top secret programming to save lives and defend our nation. During that short news segment this tiny, wiry woman looked as if she could still take on anything that a war or computer or even a "bug" could send her way.

After reading this biography I feel as if I had an opportunity to meet Grace, and I'm eager to introduce her to kids everywhere, especially to girls..

In case you missed it, take a look at my earlier review of Laurie's most recent release in this series, NUMBERS IN MOTION: Sophie Kowalevski, Queen of Mathematics.  

I celebrate women in math, science, engineering, and technology, including Laurie Wallmark. As a writer and reader, I appreciate the challenges she must have encountered and then surpassed in creating each of these books. Each is a portal to the past while bringing forward these accomplished and inspiring women to gain present day admiration.

I honor all women who recognize their capacity as agents of growth, knowledge, and change in a world, in the past and present. From Ada to Sophie to Hedy to Grace, women have demonstrated their ability to learn and lead and leverage their too-limited status to arrive at the top of their fields. Although limitations for girls and women have "eased" over time, the playing field is by no means level. It's ironic, and unjust, that digital media has too often become a tool for actively generating bias and resistance to girls and women in STEM fields.

To mark this celebration, I'm giving  away a signed copy of NUMBERS IN MOTION to encourage everyone to share these books with ALL kids, helping both genders of the next generation to seek and welcome others into careers in STEM. Deadline is midnight Sunday, January 24, Central time.

One chance to win will be added for each of the following, as many as you choose:

• Comment below on one (or more) of the titles reviewed here. 
• Comment below about how you shared this post on social media (Twitter, FB, Instagram) 
• Comment on your own attitude about math, good or bad. I promise not to scold!
• Ask Laurie a question. I hope to interview her about her upcoming March release, and may be able to include your question!)
• Clicked through to explore Laurie's website (click on WOMEN IN STEM in the top line) and comment on something you learned there.

Good luck!

Putting the CELEBRATION in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday

 In the nine years I've been sharing picture books on this blog, I've had LOADS to say about Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday recognitions. After reading this post, I invite you to use the search box in the right column menu to find previous featured titles. I've felt strongly positive about the books I chose to showcase, but MANY of them focus on history. MANY are biographic, inspiring and motivating and providing content that could have been missed in mainstream culture through relentlessly white-focused portrayal of American culture. Few, though, are contemporary, humorous, joyful, or playful. In large part that's because books of that type rarely existed. If they did they were the "precious few" that everyone already knew about. Think of Ezra Jack Keats's THE SNOWY DAY (and other titles).

The best news is that, as I began to assemble this collage of covers, I had to stop in order to have enough room for the rest of the blog post! These are only fifteen of my recent favorites, and there are so many more, including others that are featured in past posts on this very blog.

BLACK JOY PICTURE BOOKS!

To honor Martin Luther King, Jr. on this national holiday commemorating his birthday, I'll share this bounty of beautiful recent books portraying BLACK JOY! My celebration is that there are now so many picture books that portray readers of EVERY identity, allowing kids to see themselves in the pages of those contemporary exhuberant stories. My notes below will be a select few, but you can find more HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE. In fact, while you check out those resources from others, you may want to subscribe to their blog posts, too!

Click the titles below to read some brief notes for any-and-all that appeal to you:

  MIXED ME is written by Taye Diggs and illustrated by Shane W. Evans. 

JABARI TRIES is written and illustrated by Gaia Cornwall

FOR BEAUTIFUL BLACK BOYS WHO BELIEVE IN A BETTER WORLD is written by Michael W. Waters and Illustrated by Keisha Morris.

JUST LIKE ME is written and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton.

MY RAINY DAY ROCKET SHIP is written by Market Sheppard and illustrated by Charley Palmer.

SWISH! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters is written by Sizanne Slade and Little illustrated by Don Tate.

MY HAIR IS MAGIC is written by M. L. Marroquin and illustrated by Tonya Engel.

BLACK IS A RAINBOW COLOR is written by Angela Joy and illustrated by Ekua Holmes.

NORMAN The Amazing Goldfish is written by Kelly Bennett and illustrated by Noah Z.

THE WORLD MADE A RAINBOW is written by Michelle Robinson and illustrated by Emily Hamilton.

ALL BECAUSE YOU MATTER is written by Tami Charles and illustrated by Bryan Collier.

EVELYN DEL REY IS MOVING AWAY is written by Meg medina and illustrated by Sonia Sanchez.

BROWN BABY LULLABY is written by Tameka Fryer Brown and illustrated by A. G. Ford.

HELP WANTED: MUST LOVE BOOKS written by Janet Sumner Johnson and illustrated by Courtney Dawson.

DUSK EXPLORERS is written by Lindsay Leslie and illustrated by Ellen Rooney.

Whew!  Doesn't that look wonderful?  Well, despite this joyful shift in focus and subject matter, here's the bad news. Based on data that is collected and analyzed annually about the patterns of the publishing industry for children's books, progress is being made, but at a glacial pace. 

Minimal, barely budging progress.

2019 Data Analysis

“Keep Moving Forward,” is a theme from Dr. King’s address “Keep Moving the Mountain”, given at Spelman College on April 10, 1960. He said, 

“Keep moving, for it may well be that the greatest song has not yet been sung, the greatest book has not yet been written, the highest mountain has not been climbed. This is your challenge! Reach out and grab it and make it a part of your life…we must keep moving. If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl; but by all means keep moving…whatever you do you have to Keep Moving Forward.”

 I can think of no better advice than this to the industry and to the readers, buyers, and teachers of children's books: make your voices heard through recommendations, reviews, purchases, requests from libraries, and social media. Examine your own stock of picture books featuring Black characters and work to update your shelves, making certain to include current, colorful, uplifting titles like these.

Meet SOPHIE KOWALEVSKI, Queen of Mathematics

I have always found math to be easy, intuitive, and even fun. Don't take that as bragging, since it is the sheer (and lucky) consequence of good genes. I was born to parents who were very bright and raised with older siblings (also bright) whose headstart on life I often resented. Their activities presented a constant challenge for me to figure out whatever they were doing and match them, including card games, rote memorizing of "times tables", etc. It matters, too, that I never heard complaints among them that "math is HARD". 

Creston Books, 2020

Even so, I was in awe of the subject of this narrative biography for older readers.  NUMBERS IN MOTION: Sophie Kowalevski, Queen of Mathematics is among the latest of author Laurie Wallmark's  WOMEN IN STEM series, illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg. Sophie, too, had both nature-and-nurture benefits, raised by a father who was a professor of mathematics in a household with complex formulas plastered across her bedroom walls. 

The story behind that situation offers both humor and irony. When her father ran out of wallpaper for her bedroom, he pasted his old college notebook pages onto the blank spaces. Young Sophia's elastic and expansive mind absorbed the language of those formulas as readily as children in bilingual homes become fluent in both. She traced formulas, identified patterns and symbols, creating her own versions of mathematical stories. But her life was lived during an era in which females were rarely taught academics beyond those needed to run a household. Certainly not advanced mathematics.

Sophie's insatiable curiosity while still a child resulted in self-study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and, eventually, the complex challenges of differential equations. Everything in her life raised questions that she was certain could be resolved by mathematics, including the patterns of a spinning top. The fact that such solutions seemed impossible only fueled her efforts. 

Sophie's undeniable  brilliance and determination earned her advocates from among her father's colleagues. Eventually, male professors and authorities bent or defied the rules that banned females from attending university classes, or gaining a doctoral degree, or becoming a professor. The social and political restraints of her time were more challenging than mathematical ones, but they, too, could be solved.

This biography manages a delicate balance of focusing mainly on Sophie's adult experiences with minimal time spent on the subject's childhood. In this case, those limited spreads of Sophie as a child, both in narrative and images, will hook young readers. What could possibly earn more empathy from a kid than being told NO to what you want most in the world? And Sophie was told NO throughout her life, including the laws that prevented women from leaving Russia unless permitted to do so by a father or husband. She was determined to reach Heidelberg University in Germany, the European center for mathematical studies. How she overcame those and other obstacles are sometimes jaw-dropping solutions, leading me to cheer her on and smirk in satisfaction with each page turn.

Wallmark's research is incredibly deep, and her expertise in deciding what to include is equally deft. The author's note is a valuable read, as is a page labeled "Sophie's math". Sophie is credited with solving many ageless math mysteries, including one labeled the mermaid puzzle, because finding an answer was thought to be as elusive as finding a mermaid. Backmatter also includes a timeline, a bibliography, and a full page explanation about how and why Wallmark chose the spelling she did for her subject's name. I'll echo the author's hope that everyone will read this page, since it addresses an authoring-puzzle. Translation from other languages is an art form of its own, but when it comes to spelling names that originated in other alphabets, how can one choose and feel validated about that choice? This solution will surprise you, and also indicate how thoroughly Wallmark does her homework.

This is a book I wish had existed when I was growing up, a time when my library choices were minimal and few books held surprises or role models like this one does. The idea that the investigation of mathematical theories  was a potential career option never occurred to me. I suspect it never occurred to my teachers, either, even though the field obviously existed for centuries. Unlike Sophie, my drive was toward human puzzles and services. I harbored an ever-since-kindergarten-rules resentment of gender restrictions that would have made Sophie a personal hero. Throughout my long career in education I could have shared her story, raising her banner for curiosity, independence, and drive. I would have honored her personal motto for ALL of my students, but especially for girls: 

"SAY WHAT YOU KNOW, DO WHAT YOU MUST, COME WHAT MAY."

Laurie Wallmark had agreed to respond to some interview questions in a future post that will include the other titles in her series, especially the upcoming CODE BREAKER, SPY HUNTER: HOW ELIZEBETH FRIEDMAN CHANGED THE COURSE OF TWO WORLD WARS  (Abrams Kids, 2021) Until then, you can learn more about the "story behind the story" from other interviews about this book by reading her other blog tour interviews linked HERE.

And now, a PSA from this teacher to adults:

Even if your own life experience has been that "math is hard for me", PLEASE don't say that aloud in the presence of kids. Many adults are feeling frustrated or confused while supporting kids in distance learning or home schooling, but please start with an attitude that ANSWERS CAN BE FOUND, even when they are challenging. In a time with YouTube tutorials and countless other digital resources, dive in and struggle alongside the kids to make sense whenever possible. Or simply model asking questions and seeking help. A message that "some people" just aren't good at math is one of the most limiting messages you could send, especially it comes from adults who those kids love and admire. It is a pass to stop thinking, and gives your approval for not trying.

Sermon over.