Updated: Jun 25, 2024
The Cinderella Story
of Caroline Herschel -
The First Professional Woman Astronomer
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Chronicle Books
(pub. 3.5.2024)
60 pages
Ages 5 - 8
Author: Pamela Turner
Illustrator: Vivien Mildenberger
Character: Caroline Herschel
Overview:
" In a day when girls were barely educated at all, Caroline Herschel's father taught her math and music . . . until, suddenly, he died. Her mother saw her as little more than a household servant. Caroline might have been doomed to a life of drudgery and dimness if not for her brother, who took her from Germany to England. There they started looking for comets, and building telescopes in their free time, gradually making them larger and larger. Their many discoveries brought the great astronomers of the day to their doorstep, where they found that the Herschels had made the best telescopes of their time.
From household drudge to belle of the scientific ball, Caroline Herschel won international prizes never before awarded to a woman and earned a professional wage from the king. She and her discoveries remain as stunning today as they were then. In this delightfully imaginative retelling of Caroline's career, her fairy godmother is none other than her own bright intelligence, hard work, and passion for science."
Tantalizing taste:
"The next day, it rained. Caroline worried.
Would it be too cloudy to see her object again?
Light faded into darkness. The clouds drifted
away, and the sky unfolded its wonders. Caroline
found the glowing light again and measured its
position. It had moved since the night before.
It must be a comet!
Too excited to sleep, Caroline
wrote to other astronomers asking
them to confirm her discovery."
And something more: The back matter explains that "if William and Caroline lived in our times, any scientific papers based on their joint efforts would carry both their names. But in the eighteenth century, it was taken for granted that William was the scientist and Caroline was merely his assistant, despite her expert mathematical and astronomical skills...
Even in old age, Caroline continued to advance the science of astronomy. She created several catalogs showing the positions of thousands of stars, star clusters, and nebulae. Caroline's work was so precise that some of her catalogs are still in use today."
Updated: Dec 26, 2024
Thrilled 🎉 to be celebrating World Ocean Day (Saturday 6/8/24) at one of my favorite places -- The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA -- with a noon reading and launch of our NEW picture book biography, Else B. in the Sea - The Woman who Painted the Wonders of the Deep! (Abrams/Cameron Kids). Gorgeous ocean illustrations by Melodie Stacey.
If you're in the area, I hope you'll stop by and say hello AND see the pups that have been rescued and are being rehabilitated for their release back to the ocean.
Admission to the Center is free - just reserve a spot online at The Marine Mammal Center.
Book reading PLUS a free drawing of a signed book AND handouts of fun craft activities to take home!
The children's book features the pioneering artist, Else Bostelmann, who painted never – before – seen bioluminescent creatures described by scientist, William Beebe, on his 1930s bathysphere expeditions off the coast of Bermuda for the department of tropical research (now the The Wildlife Conservation Society.
Else even painted underwater to understand the effect of different depths of ocean water on the appearance of color.
I was inspired to write the true stories of ASTRO THE STELLER SEA LION and HONEY GIRL THE HAWAIIAN MONK SEAL by the amazing work done at The Marine Mammal Center.
A True Tale with
A CHERRY ON TOP
Peachtree
(pub. 6.11.2024)
32 pages
Ages 4 - 8
Author: Kerry Aradhya
Illustrator: Kara Kramer
Character: Ernő Rubik
Overview:
"A solitary child, Ernő Rubik grew up in post-World War II Hungary obsessed with puzzles, art, nature, and the underlying patterns and structures. He became a professor of art, architecture, and design, who was still fascinated with how objects work together, sometimes becoming greater than their components.
In a quest to help his students understand three-dimensional objects and how they move—not to mention a desire to entertain himself—he fashioned a cube whose pieces twisted and turned without breaking, and unexpectedly invented the Rubik's Cube, the most popular puzzle in history, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2024."
Tantalizing taste:
"Ernő was curious about the objects around him.
What did they look like on the inside?
Drawing them helped him understand the world.
He was also curious about geometric shapes.
How many ways could he fit them together?
Tangrams, pentominoes, and pentacubes
helped him imagine all the possibilities.
Ernő thought the three-dimensional
objects he created out of his little cubes
were beautiful."
And something more: The author, Kerry Aradhya, kindly shared with me a wonderful inside scoop about the book: "Ernő Rubik's parents were a great inspiration to him, especially his father, who was an aviation engineer. If you look closely, you will see a yellow toy plane hanging from the ceiling of Ernő's room in a few spreads from the book. I love that Kara Kramer incorporated that little detail into the art!" Me too! It's just the type of secret that I find students love to hear when I do school visits.
As a parent of two sons who LOVED to race each other to solve the Rubik's Cube, I was fascinated to learn about the creation of the cube. The section at the back of the book, The Magic Cube, explains: "If you think Ernő Rubik knew how to solve the puzzle he'd invented, you'd be wrong. That's because he never intended to invent a puzzle at all! It was only after twisting and turning the three-dimensional object, and losing track of its original position, that he became curious about how to restore order to the chaos he'd created ... It took him about a month to find a solution, and he did it using a combination of intuition and logic."
Ernö Rubik and his Magic Cube is a delightful celebration of creativity, intuition and logic!
