Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math by Jeannine Atkins (review)

As she did in Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science (BCCB 6/16), Jeannine Atkins presents a distinguished sorority, drawing readers beyond the customary strictures of collective biographies and into a sensitive exploration not only of accomplishments but the resilient inner lives of women who struggled to navigate male-dominated fields. Seven chapters in verse highlight the familiar—Caroline Herschel, whose calculations led to multiple comet discoveries; Marie Tharp, whose sea floor maps forced geologists to take sea floor spread seriously; Katherine Johnson, whose mathematical work at NASA is finally receiving public acclaim. They also shed new light on a familiar name: nurse Florence Nightingale, whose data collection and graphing opened inroads in public health. Three less familiar figures add depth to the field: Hertha Marks Ayrton, for whom math led to a pioneering career in electrical engineering; Edna Lee Paisano, whose analytical work at the Census Bureau led to a career dedicated to redress of the decennial undercount of fellow Native Americans; and Vera Rubin, whose groundbreaking research on the speed of outer stars in spiral galaxies provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. Although longer biographical works are seldom grist for readalouds, Atkins' respect for the particularities of each life manifests in the image-rich poetry that recommends itself to oral presentation. For Caroline Herschel, for instance, "Winter offers long nights with more time/to sweep the sky, moving the telescope like a broom/meant to gather every star." Notes and bibliographies are appended for each entry. This is a must-buy for STEAM collections.