Take a moment to be female and black, growing up as smart as a whip, and having no place to go to school. Imagine that your dad finds a way, and through it a spaceship was saved. Understand well why people would be “Counting on Katherine“. Learn the story of how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13.
Don’t you just loved when an illustrator of picture books captures a story really well? When I opened the pages of Counting on Katherine and saw all the white space surrounding full colour, simply drawn pictures I was drawn into the story of Katherine Johnson, watching her through her formative years and seeing her turn into a well respected lady. 
Katherine was a mathematically minded girl who was as smart as a whip. Her papa had a problem, how could he get her the education that she needed. Katherine had a problem, what would she do with the education she received?
The simple drawings with plenty of white space helped bring life to the story.
We saw how women helped to shape the space program, working in the background on the computers, formulating numbers. It was very good to see by hard work, determination and accuracy, Katherine established a reputation as being reliable and dependable.
My thoughts:
Math and dreams filled with pages of this delightful book. I so enjoy a good tale and watching good stories of real life people succeed in their ventures of life. It’s good to be inspired by people who follow through on their dreams and to see the help they got along the way.
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Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13 Helaine Becker Dow Phumiruk Christy Ottaviano Books 40 pages, ages 5-9 Biography, elementary Reviewed for Raincoast Books. Where to find: Amazon Link. |
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