Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor (review)

Although "Mattie" Knight and her flat-bottomed paper grocery bag find their way into collections of inventor biography with some regularity, putting her story into picture-book format should extend her fame to a younger audience. McCully traces Knight's career from tinkerer, making toys for siblings and neighbors, to her first major mechanical innovation—a protective device to keep loose shuttles from flying off looms—produced around 1850 when she was just a twelve-year-old mill worker. Her invention of the bag-folding machine and the legal battle to win the patent for it bring Knight's tale to its climax, and a concluding note comments briefly on her continuing work with window sashes and automobile engines. The text does not always run smoothly, but it successfully conveys the drama of Knight's life and her focused intensity. Illustrations are vintage McCully, with dense swaths of watercolor tenuously delineated by filaments of ink outline; imagined reconstructions of Knight's sketches (one based on patent records) run along the bottom of several spreads. Invite Ms. Knight to hang out on the display shelf during Women's History Month or the run-up to the local science fair.