An appealing biography of a quietly trailblazing engineer.
An accessible biography of Margaret Hamilton, who had a leadership role in writing the software that would send astronauts to the moon—and bring them back.
A prologue sets up President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon and MIT’s Instrumentation Lab’s role in developing the Apollo Guidance Computer; Margaret was the only woman in the room during a pivotal meeting between skeptical astronauts and the MIT team, who promised to achieve this goal within a few years. Hamilton’s story, intertwined with the Apollo missions, is then set out in a linear fashion: childhood, adolescence, college, and marriage; her path to becoming a key player in writing the software for the AGC; and multiple Apollo missions and her career after the Apollo program ended. Hamilton’s task was not just to write code, but to persuade the astronauts to trust the digital autopilot feature; she accomplished both and declared the moon landing a highlight of her life. Technical language and terms are explained simply, and captioned photographs and sidebar content are included generously throughout. These valuable elements—such as a photo of Hamilton in a command module simulator and information about Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson—make the book inviting and approachable. The book presents Hamilton as not having focused or dwelled on any gender-based discrimination she faced and does not look at how she was able to succeed despite it.
An appealing biography of a quietly trailblazing engineer. (timeline, notes, references, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-62672-856-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats.
Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory?
Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries. These include Shapur II, who was formally crowned king of Persia before he was born, Indian dancer/professional architect Sheila Sri Prakash, transgender spokesperson Jazz Jennings, inventor Param Jaggi, and an international host of other teen or preteen activists and prodigies. The individual portraits range from one paragraph to several pages in length, and they are interspersed with group tributes to, for instance, the Nazi-resisting “Swingkinder,” the striking New York City newsboys, and the marchers of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Mitchell even offers would-be villains a role model in Elagabalus, “boy emperor of Rome,” though she notes that he, at least, came to an awful end: “Then, then! They dumped his remains in the Tiber River, to be nommed by fish for all eternity.” The entries are arranged in no evident order, and though the backmatter includes multiple booklists, a personality quiz, a glossary, and even a quick Braille primer (with Braille jokes to decode), there is no index. Still, for readers whose fires need lighting, there’s motivational kindling on nearly every page.
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats. (finished illustrations not seen) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-751813-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Puffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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