Hidden Figures: Young Readers' Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly

Pages: 198

Intended Audience: Mature tweens and up

Genre: Non-fiction; historical

Notes for Parents: Contains some mature content

The Back Cover

From World War II through NASA’s golden age, four African-American women confidently and courageously stepped into the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (now known as NASA).

Their job? To provide the mathematical calculations that would help increase airplane production during wartime and eventually send the United States into space for the very first time. Hidden Figures follows the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who participated in some of the United States’ greatest aeronautic successes. These women lived through and persevered against the backdrop of some of the biggest movements ever to shape our nation’s history: the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, and the fight for gender equality.

What the cover doesn’t tell you:

I read the Young Readers’ Edition. Hidden Figures inspired the movie of the same name.

What’s good?

America’s aeronautics program became an important field during the war and it needed a large number of mathematicians to do the calculations needed to improve airplane design. Women with math degrees usually became high school teachers, but when World War II broke out, many men went to war, leaving important job opportunities open to women for the first time. This is the story of four of these women, black women, who worked at NACA (which would eventually become NASA) as “computers” – mathematicians who calculated complex problems. These women, despite the importance of their jobs, struggled constantly against sexism and racism in the workplace. The Young Readers’ Edition is easy to read, has small chapters, and includes pictures.

Best Part: The personal stories.

What isn’t good?

It’s dry. There is a lack of storytelling that leaves the reader disengaged despite the fascinating subject matter. Facts, technical terms, and process descriptions make up most of the chapters, leaving only a little room for the personal struggles of the courageous women who broke race barriers (as well as sound barriers!) in their pursuit of the American dream.

Worst part: I hear the movie is better than the book.

Recommendation ☺☺☻☻☻(2/5)

This is a mesmerizing story that unfortunately became bogged down in too much technical jargon. We learn about the personal lives of the women at NACA, but not enough to offset the tremendous amount of facts that get dumped into every chapter. I would have liked to know more about the fear, the frustration, and the strong will it must have taken to go to work each day in a place that treated the women as lesser than for being women, and even lower for being black, despite the incredible contributions they were making to the field.

Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: Young Readers’ Edition. New York: Scholastic, 2016.