Rock Star

How Ursula Marvin Mapped

Moon Rocks and Meteorites

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

A Paula Wiseman Book

(Simon & Schuster)

pub. 10.14.2025

64 pages

Ages 4 - 8

Author: Sandra Neil Wallace

   Illustrator: Nancy Carpenter

Character: Ursula Marvin

Overview:

"While attending college in the early 1940s, Ursula Marvin fell in love with geology, but when she asked her male professor about making the field her major, he tried to stop her, saying it would be a better use of her time to learn how to cook. Ursula studied geology anyway, eventually getting her master’s and PhD in the subject.

As a visionary and groundbreaking geologist, Ursula also had to be brave. She believed meteorites held the key to unlocking the origins of the solar system. To prove it, she travelled to Antarctica where she faced fierce winds, the coldest climate on Earth, and cracks in the ice that could have crushed her, but she knew the danger was worth the risk and scientific exploration wasn’t just for men. She proved her theory and that meteorites could be made up of pieces of planets or the moon.

Ursula Marvin charted new territory as a scientist and fought gender discrimination at every turn in her career. She broke barriers in science, helped create the field of planet geology, and discovered theories that are now foundational, reshaping our understanding of the universe."

Tantalizing taste:

"Wavy, black meteorites on ice fields, turquoise blue.

Specimens as small as berries on rippled gray slopes.

Foot-long meteorites older than Earth, their crusts a velvety brown like the skua birds flying above, and just as rare.

Whenever Ursula discovered a meteorite, she heard the ice hum beneath her snowmobile.

That week, the ice hummed 159 times."

And something more: Sandra Neil Wallace in the Author's Note notes: "Back then [1940s], it was nearly impossible for women to have science careers...She became the first faculty member in Harvard's geology department and the first woman president of the Meteoritical Society. She pushed for equal access and pay equity for women scientists by launching the first women's program at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory - the location of Ursula's main laboratory."