This is a celebration of underrepresented and often unappreciated women in the math profession. It's engaging, but you have to get to the back matter to get to substantive information on the mathematicians presented. Will this spark enough curiosity to get young readers to do further research? Unsure.

A worthy successor to Jeannine Atkins previous story about female astronauts. A STEM biography in verse,

I received an electronic ARC from Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing through NetGalley.
Biographies of seven female mathematicians told through poetry. Atkins uses a variety of verse styles to tell their stories. The challenges and difficulties come through as each woman fought for her chance to become who she wanted to be. Middle grade readers will appreciate these role models. Mostly single page poems allow them to process each part of the women's lives and then move on to learn more.
Informative text provided at the end of the book.

My daughters' fifth grade math teacher would rejoice at this title.  She felt that it was so important for girls to take for granted that they could do math, just as they could read.  This title will reinforce that idea by sharing the stories of girls who loved math. 


The girls featured here were born anywhere between the 1700s and 1900s so quite a time span.  Included are Caroline Herschel, who discovered a comet; Florence Nightingale; Hertha Marks Ayrton who became an engineer and inventor; Marie Tharp who mapped the ocean floor; Katherine Jenkins, of Hidden Figures fame; Edna Lee Paisana who was a Native American statistician and Vera Rubin who studied dark matter.


This title is an inspiring one.  Girls learn, they persist and they make a difference.  What a message for all children to take in.


Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title in exchange for an honest review.

This one was great and did a good job highlighting both more well-known scientific women (Katherine Johnson) with lesser known ones. The verse format really works for these stories! I loved learning more about these women and I really hope that the young women in my library community will enjoy this one as much as I did!