Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson by Katherine G. Johnson (audiobook)

genre - middle grade non-fiction, autobiography

You may recognize the name Katherine Johnson if you have seen the movie Hidden Figures - Katherine is the one who is wicked smart and ends up being the only Black mathematician (and only woman!) in a room full of white men who are trying to get a man on the moon.  This book, geared towards younger readers, tells Katherine's story, the way her experiences growing up strengthened her to not just manage the challenges and heartache in her way but to never give up on her dream: to work with numbers for the rest of her life.

I listened to this in the car with my sons on a roadtrip and both my seven year olds and my fourteen year old (but more my fourteen year old) were interested and had a lot of questions.  Katherine does not gloss over the racism and sexism she encountered throughout her life and it led to some good discussions.  I loved how close she was with her family and how the values she learned from her parents (most especially that her Blackness was not something to be ashamed of and that she truly was as good as anybody) were shown to help her when she was older.  I also got a lot of cultural history out of this book - as she learns and teaches in different schools as the years go by and while it was sometimes a little repetitive and she could've maybe gone a little deeper into the details of her work at NASA at the end, it still leaves you with the feelin that this woman led a full and well-lived life.  

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