Nonfiction Monday Review: Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming

Amelia Earhart has always been a legendary woman for me. A larger than life person who defied the odds and the conventions of the day, only to find her life cut tragically short (or was it?!) in pursuit of her dreams. But I have to admit, I've never known much beyond the myth, which is where Amelia Lost comes in, as Fleming does an amazing job of describing not only the myth of Amelia, but bringing to life the human woman as well.

Fleming skillfully uses alternating chapters to explore both the search for Amelia Earhart after she was lost in 1937, and a biography of her life up until that point. The book opens on the coast guard cutter Itasca, which was scheduled to meet up with Amelia and refuel her plane before she made the hop to Honolulu and then back on to the United States. As the crew of the Itasca grows frantic trying to contact the missing pilot, Fleming then brings us back to Amelia's childhood - where she was known early on as a tomboy.

Even though I knew how the story would end, Fleming does an amazing job building up the tension of Amelia's final flight, as she edged closer and closer to the final Pacific leg of the journey. A real nail biter. But what's perhaps most amazing is that Amelia had made it to that point at all. Flying in the 1920s and 1930s wasn't always the safest proposition, and it seems like Amelia may have had more than her fair share of accidents, in part because she was always pushing herself to establish or beat the next record.

If ever there was a book that seems like it's a candidate for the enhanced ebook treatment, Amelia Lost is it. Okay, I don't have an ereader so I have no idea if they're up to the task of handling all of the pictures (these are 99% black and white, so the grayscale e-ink wouldn't be a problem), but Fleming judiciously includes URLs in the text where appropriate - such as learning Morse code - that could easily be incorporated into the ebook version. She also includes links in the bibliography.

This is also a wonderfully designed book. I love the Art Deco-style chapter headings, which really add a historical flair to the story, and then the chapters about the search for Amelia are set apart on gray paper, giving an additional visual cue that this is a different part of the narrative.

If you've ever been at all curious about Amelia Earhart, Amelia Lost is definitely a must read.




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Writing Nonfiction for Children. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

I'm kind of a bad English major - I've actually never read one of Edith Wharton's novels. So why did I pick up this biography? Because even if I haven't read her work, I'm still fascinated by women who defied social expectations and made a career for themselves - and Edith Wharton was certainly one of those women.

Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.

While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.

Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.

This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Girl in the Song by Michael Heatley

Found via: Chasing Ray

I'm not generally a big music person - I'm not the type that is constantly hooked up to an iPod or streaming Pandora. The music I do listen to, however, I like to know a lot about. The lyrics at a bare minimum. When VH1's Behind the Music debuted, I was totally fascinated because I wanted to know what inspired people to write the songs they did. The Girl in the Song fulfills that need for me, describing the women who inspired 50 rock songs, by artists ranging from Buddy Holly to David Bowie.


Heatley arranges the songs by title and methodically spends a couple of pages on each song, dedicating most of the text to a biography of the woman and/or how she inspired the artist, and then in a box at the end gives a short introduction to the band or artist (as necessary - eventually all of the Beatles and Rolling Stones pages are dedicated just to the woman, because there's only so much you can say about those legendary groups without becoming redundant).

Perhaps because the book is limited to "rock" songs, it sometimes feels a little redundant - as I said, there are a lot of Beatles and Rolling Stones references. Even David Bowie has multiple entries. I'm far from a music encyclopedia, but were there no other songs worthy of having their stories told?

That being said, I did like that variety that is included. Most of the songs are well known by now, and some of the background stories are well known, too, but others are more obscure. Leonard Cohen wrote Chelsea Hotel No 2 about Janis Joplin. "Fire and Rain" was written in part as a memorial to a dead friend. I was especially fascinated when the same person came up multiple times. English model/photographer Pattie Boyd inspired at least three songs by two different artists - husbands George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and the Farrow sisters Mia and Prudence both inspired famous songs.

I really appreciate that Heatley keeps most of the focus on the women who served as inspiration for the songs. The artist's side of the story has already been shared with millions of people - it's about time the woman's side was shared. Heatley highlights how the songs popularity affected the women, and their own career accomplishments.

This is a quick read, but extremely fun for pop culture and music trivia fans. While it's not specifically a YA title, I think it will have a lot of interest for young music fans, and could be a great companion read to a book like Audrey Wait, which is all about how life changes dramatically for a girl who inspires a major hit song.


This week's Nonfiction Monday roundup is hosted by Charlotte's Library. Get 2011 off to an educational start and see what else is being reviewed today!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Janis Joplin Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

Janis Joplin. Does the woman truly need an introduction? An inimitable voice, a tragically short life, she was a true rock star, one of the few women to jump in feet first to rock hard with the men of the 60s.

As soon as I opened this book I knew why it had been nominated for the nonfiction award. It's a visually striking book, with psychedelic borders on every page, sticking out against the mostly black and white photography.

The book dives right in to Joplin's mostly unhappy high school life. While she had a loving and supportive family, she didn't fit in with the rigid conformity demanded by her small Texas home town. Joplin fell in with the "bad boys," started reading the Beats, and plotting ways to escape - first to Austin, then to LA, San Francisco and New York City.

Angel follows Joplin's artistic growth. Music wasn't her first or only passion - she was also a painter and initially used that as her creative outlet before discovering her amazing voice. Inspired by folk and the blues, Janis went on to forge a sound all her own.


(My favorite Janis Joplin song - Piece of My Heart)

Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like the text lives up to the art design in this biography. It feels choppy, with extremely brief and random notes on parts of Joplin's life that I feel like were only put in there to be edgy. There's a paragraph or two on Joplin's relationships with women, which are never brought up again. Same with a brief paragraph about an abortion Joplin sought in Mexico in 1967 - a paragraph that also includes the factually incorrect statement that abortion was illegal in the United States at the time. This is a minor point, and I have no reason to believe Angel gets any of the important biographical data wrong, but it still bugs me and makes me question how correct the rest of her research was.

EDIT: Ann Angel was kind enough to contact me today regarding this point (and I would have corrected this sooner, but Blogger wasn't cooperating with my work computer). After careful consideration, she and her copy editors "opted to apply the date of the Supreme Court decision (Roe v. Wade)" to the text when discussing the legality of abortion in the US. I really appreciate Ann Angel contacting me about this point and clarifying her writing and research process. I still feel that the way the text is currently written it over-simplifies a culturally significant issue, but I want to publicly thank Ms. Angel for taking the time to contact me and consider my concerns.

This is a beautiful book, about an important person in music history, but unfortunately the writing doesn't live up to its promise.




Today's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Books Together, but before checking out the rest of the nonfiction being reviewed this week, please also visit my What have I missed? post from yesterday, where I'm collecting titles for my own personal 2011 reading challenge.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Anne Frank: The Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon are making a career for themselves out of adapting stories to graphic novel form. I first became aware of them with their graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report. Since then they've looked at the War on Terror and written a biography of Che Guevara. Now, with the blessing of the Anne Frank House, they've put together a biography of the Holocaust's most famous young victim: Anne Frank.

Jacobson and Colon go back to the 1920s, when Anne's parents met, to give Anne's brief life a history and context. Both of Anne's parents were well-to-do members of society, with her father working for the family bank and serving honorably in World War I. The book briefly covers their early lives together and the birth of Anne's sister, Margot, before bringing Anne herself into the story.

Anne had a happy childhood, filled with loving friends and family, that was unfortunately marred by increasing hardship, thanks to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, ultimately leaving the family no choice but to move into the famous Secret Annex.

Jacobson and Colon do an excellent job of putting Anne's life into the context of the greater war that was being waged first in Europe, and then around the world. Periodic "snapshots" take us to important events, giving us a quick synopsis of the events and their aftermath (for example, the new restrictions placed on Jews in German-occupied territories after Kristallnacht). World maps also quickly and clearly identify that allies and axis powers as well as their colonies and territories throughout the world. The visual nature of the graphic novel is really utilized well here.

This biography is also extremely powerful when it comes to illustrating what happened after the family was discovered, grimly detailing the family's days in various concentration and extermination camps. Jacobson and Colon pull in references from other prisoners who knew Anne, some who knew her both before the war and were also imprisoned with her.

The graphic novel format is perfect to bring Anne's story to a wider audience, and one that works for all ages. This could be read by children who are just being introduced to Anne Frank (I think I first read her diary in fourth grade), or older students or adults who are re-visiting the era. The format is used extremely effectively, as I found it easier to understand the timeline of events and to connect Anne's life with what was happening in the rest of the world easier than ever before. It's a quick read and while not the most exhaustive biography of Anne Frank ever, it's a great introduction to a powerful story.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction books this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone... by Martha Ackmann

Found via: the Amelia Bloomer Project

The full title of this book is Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League. Can you see why I abbreviated it?

Today is Labor Day in the US, the traditional marker of the end of summer. While baseball continues for a few more weeks before the World Series, since it's considered a summer sport I thought a baseball biography would be an excellent way to finish out the season.

I've mentioned my love of the game on here a few times, but I have a confession: I don't know much of the history of baseball. My dad knows a ton, at least when it comes to his favorite team, the Braves (boo!), but I tend to focus on the contemporary game. This is probably because a) while I enjoy baseball, my love of the game doesn't run terribly deep and b) when it comes to history, I tend to stick to women's history. Since women have historically been excluded from baseball, the means most of my baseball history concerns the AAGPBL. When I saw this book nominated for the Amelia Bloomer list, I knew I had to read it, since I knew nothing about Negro League baseball, and especially didn't know they'd had a woman play!

Marcenia Lyle Stone, aka Tomboy aka Toni, grew up in Minneapolis in the 20s and 30s and loved nothing more than baseball. She worked hard to prove her stuff and with a bit of persistence and cajoling, she played throughout her childhood on neighborhood boys teams - even going so far once as to knock a decade off of her age in order to qualify for a baseball camp taught by a former pro player!

The odds were stacked against Toni, and she knew it. Not only was she a woman who wanted to play a man's game, but when she was first trying to break into just the minor leagues, baseball was a white man's game - it would be a few years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. But Toni didn't let her race or her gender hold her back, and she made it on to some of the top ranked teams in the Negro League, just as the league was beginning to die out as segregation was eliminated in Major League Baseball and their minor league farm teams.

This is an amazing biography - as I tweeted after finishing the book, Toni Stone is my new hero. Gutsy might be the best adjective for her. Determined. Tenacious. She is an excellent example of what you can accomplish if you follow your dreams, but her story also emphasizes that those accomplishments only came after years of hard work and dedication. Nothing was easy for Toni Stone.

This is also an excellent history of baseball and Jim Crow laws in the mid-century South. There's lots of anecdotes about the history of the Negro Leagues as well as stories from some of the first black Major League players like Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron that are sure to appeal to any hardcore baseball fan. I had no idea that much of the Negro League play was in the form of Barnstorming matches, where a team would travel all across the country playing exhibition games, making their season stretch from April to November. It makes modern baseball look like a luxury cruise!

Toni spent a lot of her professional time in the South, first as part of her time as a Barnstormer travelling through the region and then playing semi-pro with the Louisiana Creole team. As such we get a first hand view of the terrible and ridiculous Jim Crow laws that were in place. Legal action was threatened in some states if a Negro League team played a white team - or even an integrated team (Jackie Robinson led a touring all star team, made up of white and black players). I have to admit, I never realized how much Jim Crow laws could affect whites as well. I don't say this as some sort of derailing, "racism hurts white people too!" comment, but rather as someone who is realizing in a new way just how much those laws were rooted in fear and hatred. I thought the laws were simply to keep Black people "in their place" while whites had free reign and could go anywhere and do whatever they wanted, but at least when it came to baseball, even if they wanted to play together, the law said they had to be kept strictly separate.

What a scary and terrifying time it must have been.

This is definitely a must-read for any baseball fan or sports history buff. It's an adult title but relatively short (less than 300 pages with a hefty bibliography/notes section in the back) and perfectly appropriate for high school or middle school student suddenly stuck inside for school when she'd rather be playing ball!


This week Nonfiction Monday is hosted by The Miss Rumphius Effect. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction posts this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Cleopatra Rules! by Vicky Alvear Shecter

While wandering through the exhibits at ALA, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this cover staring out at me from a backdrop:

I just had to stop and look around and ask about that book! Luckily, the ladies staffing the Boyds Mill Press booth were more than happy to talk about it and other books they carry featuring strong women and unique takes on history with an excited blogger. Advanced copies weren't available at ALA, but they made sure to mail me a copy as soon as they were available!

I have always loved Cleopatra - when other girls had a princess phase, I went straight to the top and loved the Queen (okay, I enjoyed my share of Disney princesses too, I suppose). One of my favorite Shakespeare plays? Antony and Cleopatra. So to say I was excited about a teen-oriented biography of this much-maligned royal is an understatement.

Shecter takes the haters to task. She hammers home the point that the victors get to write history, so it's likely that much of the Roman-oriented biography that's been handed down through the generations is unflattering at best. In truth, Cleopatra was as loved by her subjects as a Greek Pharaoh could be. Where others in the line of Ptolemy ruled apart from their Egyptian subjects, Cleopatra learned their language (as well as 20+ others!) and their rites and rituals, making her well loved by her subjects.

Cleopatra wasn't a seductress - she gained her power the old fashioned way, through cunning and shows of strength. She allied herself with the most powerful men in the world - Julius Caesar and Mark Antony - to make sure Egypt could remain a sovereign nation. She built up Egypt's armies so they had a chance of defending themselves. And she was something of a book worm, ensuring that she had the strategic knowledge to use her forces in the best way possible.

This is a beautiful book, both in content and presentation. Lots of full-color photographs of Egyptian antiquities are included and there are colorful sidebars and in-sets to highlight important information. The one turn off for me as an adult reader, was that I couldn't get past the writing style. Shecter uses a very slangy voice for the book, going so far as to refer to Octavian as "O-man" at one point. Perhaps this is just what a teen or tween needs in order to pick up a book about someone who's been dead for thousands of years, but it made it a little hard for me to take the book seriously sometimes. I kept hoping I'd get used to it, but I never did.

However, my hang ups wouldn't prevent me from strongly recommending this to someone desperate for a positive look at one of the most powerful women who ever lived. Cleopatra Rules! certainly rocks as a biography.

Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Playing by the Book this week. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction finds this week!
Also, final reminder for NYC-area readers, Books of Wonder's Mockingjay release party is tonight! I had some uploading fail yesterday, so be sure to check out my post yesterday to see what I'll be wearing so you can introduce yourself at the party!
Review copy was sent to me by the publisher, Boyds Mill Press.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Hungry by Crystal Renn

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project nomination

I'm not a big follower of fashion, but Crystal Renn's name pops up periodically in any feminist discussion of beauty and body image in popular culture, as she's one of the most successful "plus size" models working today (never mind the irony that she's in the size 10-12 range - the average size for American women today). I hadn't realized she had written a memoir, but when I saw it nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project, I knew I had to give it a read.

Renn's memoir looks briefly at her pre-modeling life, living happily with her mother and grandmother who always encouraged her to be happy more than anything else. Despite the hints at some complicated family issues, it's clear that Renn had a happy childhood.

Everything changed for her at the age of 14 when a scouting model looked at her and said she could be a star - if she lost weight. Renn says she's always been a bit compulsive and something of a perfectionist, and the scout's statement was the impetus for her perfectionist tendencies to be directed towards her body. The bulk of the memoir focuses on Renn's struggle with anorexia as she works in modeling in New York City - trying to live the dream, but never finding much success, even as her agents tell her to lose more and more weight. When she hits rock bottom, she finds the strength to get out, get healthy, and re-emerge on the scene, healthier and more talented than ever.

I've been questioning some of the Amelia Bloomer project's nonfiction nominations recently - not because they were poor quality titles, but because they really didn't seem to fall into the "birth to 18" age range the list is built for. Renn, however, is barely out of her teens herself - she's 24 now - so much of the book focuses squarely on her teen years and is written in a way that is totally accessible to teens and adults.

Renn's story is absolutely terrifying. The dominant narrative of anorexia is about girls delusional enough to think they're fat even as they're wasting away. Renn knew she had anorexia and avoided doctors even when she developed other illnesses or injuries because she knew a doctor would take one look at her and declare her anorexic. So why did she keep starving herself? It was the only way she knew how to stay working.

This is more than just Renn's personal story, however. She makes pointed criticisms of the industry and a lot of the "reforms" that have been "suggested" in order to improve the health of the women working the runways of the most important fashion shows around the world. She also gives great insights into the world of fashion that should disabuse anyone of the notion that it's full-time glamorous.

Renn's story is a powerful, positive message. When she switches to plus-size work, Renn is told that there will be plenty of work in advertising, but very little high fashion work. Renn sets out to prove them wrong, and is obviously succeeding considering how often she's been on the covers of magazines around the world. She was in the news again late last month, coming forward with allegations that she'd been photoshopped to look dangerously thin. She acknowledges in the book even that photoshopping is a way of life in the industry - getting rid of zits and stray hairs are great since fashion photography isn't about creating a documentary - but it's clear she has a strong personal line and woe to the photographer that dares to cross it.

This will definitely be of interest to anyone who's curious about the pressures of the entertainment industry - for a lot of what goes on in modeling goes on for other performers as well. It's an inspiring story of overcoming a deadly illness and not letting anything hold you back.


This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Three Turtles and their Pet Librarian. Be sure to stop by and see the other nonfiction posts this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project nomination
Welcome back from the big weekend of ALA! I'm actually writing this post on Saturday night, since I'm not getting back to New York until late tomorrow - and I know there are plenty of librarians still in DC. Hopefully we'll still get a good Non-Fiction Monday turn out!

In 2008, Nujood Ali's story was all over the blogs. The 10 year old Yemeni girl had summoned the courage and strength to seek a divorce from her husband, who was 3 times her age. Here, with the help of a reporter, Nujood gives the first hand account of that experience, describing in child-like terms growing up in poverty, one child among many between her father's two brides. Despite the obvious difficulties, Nujood is generally a happy child.

And then the terrifying news comes - that she is to be married, to a man significantly older than she is. Nujood isn't entirely sure how old she is, but she knows she doesn't want to marry and leave her family. Her father has made her future husband promise not to "touch her" until she has reached puberty, but at 10 Nujood doesn't really even know what that means, let alone what sex is and what it means when her husband demands that she act like his wife.

It is on one of her brief trips to visit her family that Nujood plans her escape, taking a taxi to the court house and making history by announcing to a judge that she wants a divorce.

Nujood's story is absolutely heartbreaking. The trauma she experienced is unimaginable for us in the West, with firmly established age of consent laws and lack of arranged marriages. The child-like prose doubles the horror for an adult reader, for while Nujood's descriptions of her relationship with her husband are never described in graphic detail, it's painfully obvious that she is raped and abused by her new husband and his family.

As an adult reader, I often craved more details - many people in the courthouse tell Nujood that granting her divorce will be nearly impossible, thanks to centuries of tradition, and yet we never see any of that struggle. A couple of meetings with a lawyer, her husband and father are temporarily sent to jail, and then a hearing - suddenly Nujood is free! However, I think for young readers the descriptions and details will be more than enough.

Nonfiction Monday is a weekly event across the kidlitosphere, highlighting and celebrating nonfiction published for children and young adults. Started by Picture Book of the Day, I'm excited to be this week's host! Participants, please leave links to your reviews in the comments, and I'll add them to this post periodically throughout the day!






Other Nonfiction Monday posts:

• Wild About Nature blog: a review of Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins.
• The Book Nosher: a review about Bill Peet, An Autobiography
• Another Steve Jenkins book, How to Clean a Hippopotamus, at Jean Little Library
• Anastasia Suen is in today with a fun book about ...Dinosaurs?! at Picture Book of the Day 
• Mary Ann Fraser brings us a guest post today by Vicki Leon on The Publishing Road Less Traveled
• SimplyScience looks at More Life Size Zoo
• The Fourth Musketeer joins us for her first Nonfiction Monday with a review of All Star, about baseball player Honus Wagner.
• Maggy at Red Ted Art reviews three books for little gardeners
• Maclibrary reviews the young reader's version of The Omnivore's Dilemma
• Shelf Employed reviews Happy Birthday The Story of the World's Most Popular Song
• Roberta introduces us to Super Women in Science at Growing With Science
• Mary Ann Dames is preparing for the fourth of July with America: A Patriotic Primer
• A Patchwork of Books comes in with two reviews of the popular Scientists in the Field series, Project Seahorse and Kakapo Rescue
• A late entry! Abby (the) Librarian finishes us off today with Lincoln Tells a Joke

What a day. Thanks to all of the Nonfiction Monday participants!

Review: Borrowed Names by Jeannine Atkins

Found via: Read Roger

More poetry! But I'm not too bothered I couldn't fit this in to National Poetry Month, as this collection is all about mothers and daughters. Well, three specific pairs of mothers & daughters: Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane, Madame C.J. Walker and daughter A'Lelia Walker and Marie Curie and daughter Irene Joiliot-Curie. A perfect post-mother's-day book!

1867 was apparently a banner year, as that is the year the three mothers highlighted in this collection were born. The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on one mother/daughter pair, chronicling the daughter's life as she grows up, watching her mother, learning from her mistakes, and gaining inspiration for her own life. For the daughters are no slouches either: Rose Wilder Lane was a journalist and a biographer before helping her mother turn stories of her childhood into the Little House series; A'Lelia Walker used the fortune she earned as part of her mother's company to support the Harlem Renaissance; and Irene Joliot-Curie joined her mother as a WWI X-Ray technician, saving countless lives, before earning her own Nobel Prize, following in her mother's footsteps by studying radioactivity.

The poetry is well done, as is the biographical content. While I'm no expert on any of these women, Atkins doesn't pull any punches and shows both the ups and downs in these women's lives, including a troubled marriage for Rose and the sexism of the Nobel committee. This bit stuck out for me:

She remembers them taking a train to Sweden
where a woman might earn the Nobel Prize
but would be kept from speaking on the stage

Borrowed Names page 149
It's subtle but spot on, in the way that only poetry can be.

This is the sort of book I would have loved to have available for Ada Lovelace Day. Maybe someone else will pick it up for review next year. While I don't think this would be a replacement for a full biography on any of these women, it's certainly an interesting supplement, and really breathes life into these families in a way a standard biography never can.


Nonfiction Monday is hosted this week by Picture Book of the Day. Check out other great non-fiction posts going up today!

Review: Marie Curie by Janice Borzendowski

Today is Ada Lovelace Day! Who was Ada Lovelace? Well, she was the world's first computer programmer. In the 19th century. That's right, she was so awesome she figured out how to program a computer before computers actually existed.

I first learned about Ada Lovelace in Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy where she is an inspiration to one of the characters. I didn't learn about Ada Lovelace Day until it was too late for me to properly celebrate, but I marked my calendar and made sure I'd be ready this year!

The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day is to celebrate women in technology and science. Since this is a book blog, I figured it would be most fitting for me to look at biographies. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. I like to focus on two things here: recent books (in the last year or so) and young adult/middle grade titles. Searching my library for books on women in science or women in technology yielded almost nothing for MG/YA readers (everything was either picture books or long adult texts). So I had to dig into my limited knowledge of women in science/technology to find a biography on a specific woman - and it was still hard to find one that had been published in the last decade, let alone the last two years. I finally found this Marie Curie biography, from the Sterling Biographies series.

Before I read this, I certainly knew of Marie Curie - she's one of the few historical women that was studied outside of women's history month for me. I knew she lived in France (okay, I actually thought she was French - she was actually born in Poland) and discovered radiation (which really isn't true, either). So, actually, I apparently knew nothing of Marie Curie nee Maria Sklodowska.

Borzendowski's biography does an excellent job of introducing us non-science types to the basics of Curie's research (which didn't involve discovering radiation, but she did coin the term radioactivity) and includes helpful sidebars on defining concepts like "radiation" and "elements and compounds" as well as histories of Poland (when Curie was born, the country was controlled by Russia) and bits on women's rights at the time (Curie achieved lots of firsts - first woman to win a Nobel prize, first person to win one in two separate categories, first woman to graduate from the Sorbonne, etc. etc.). The extra information means this biography is useful outside of a science classroom, and can be easily understood by anyone.

Awhile ago, I saw this slideshow at Slate that looked at how presidents are presented in children's biographies and found that in the biographies meant for children, the presidents were all great people well before they took office. Curious, I wondered if the same thing might hold true in Borzendowski's book. Not having time to check out a stack of adult biographies of Curie from the library, I settled with her Wikipedia page. The only major difference I found was the Wiki claims that Curie definitely had an affair with Paul Langevin while he was married and after she was widowed. The biography says that Curie always denied the affair, which I suppose is true and doesn't actually conflict with what the Wiki says. On the other hand, Langevin's Wikipedia page merely says he "reportedly" had an affair with Curie - and, in an example of how Wikipedia can end up playing a little loose with the facts, all of the citations in the entire article are reportedly to back up that fact.

One thing I absolutely loved reading about is how the presentation of Curie's work has changed in the last century. I was aware that Curie had worked with her husband, though until I read this I didn't know how deep that relationship ran. When the Curies won half of the Nobel prize in physics in 1903, only Pierre Curie was allowed to give a lecture. That happened repeatedly in their relationship, where Marie wouldn't be allowed to present her own research. Luckily, Pierre was always sure to give her proper credit for her hard work and discoveries. In the last hundred years, however, I'd argue that Marie Curie is the better known scientist, while her husband is usually thought of as secondary.

While the feminist label is never directly applied to Marie Curie in Brozendowski's book, it's clear that she held feminist values close. She often worked as a teacher of female students, and when she had her own laboratories, many of her lab assistants were women. The world needs more women like Marie Curie even today, as the New York Times reported this week that there are still persistent biases against women in science and mathematics.

In the comments, please leave links to your Ada Lovelace Day posts, tell me about your favorite woman in science/technology, or just give me some pointers towards some great YA nonfiction on the subject!

Review: The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project

This is not an easy book to read.

There are always books out there about child abuse and sexual abuse, and they are always difficult to read. This one was harder than most for me, however, because this one was real.

Somaly Mam is a Cambodian activist who was orphaned as a young child and sent to live with a man she called her grandfather (Mam doesn't know whether he was actually a relation or not). He was physically abusive, and as she became a teenager he became sexually abusive, and would sell Mam to other men to rape in order to settle his debts.

Around 15 or 16, Mam was sold into organized prostitution, forced to live and work in a brothel, again as a way of settling debt.

After a few years as a prostitute, Mam finally escaped with the help of a French aid worker, and has since dedicated her life (and risking it on several occasions) to help the girls and women of south east Asia escape prostitution, get the medical care they need, and learn marketable skills so they'll never need to re-enter the sex trade.

Throughout the book, Mam provides unflinching looks into the world of abuse she lived in for far too long. She is raped multiple times, beaten and tortured.

Mam's story is set against the backdrop of a Cambodia constantly in turmoil. She was born a few years before Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control of the country. Mam was illiterate and spent most of her formative years in rural areas so she's unable to give a lot of details of what was happening when, but it's clear that the country has been unstable for her entire life, and Mam theorizes that that instability and the horrors the people survived under the Khmer Rouge play a part in why her countrymen are so willing to allow abusive prostitution to continue and thrive.

While it's difficult to read, this is an important book, highlighting the nightmarish realities of the sex trade. Make sure you have something fun and fluffy to read after this one, though. You're going to need it.

Review: Michelle Obama: an American Story by David Colbert

Since this past weekend featured the US playing host to the G-20 summit, which included Michelle Obama hosting the spouses of the G-20 leaders, it seems like as fitting time as any to read a biography of our newest first lady.

First thing I noticed about this book: I love the cover. I usually don't pay much attention to a cover, unless it's utterly fabulous or utterly terrible (or has some irritating detail, like the 'shopped eyebrow ring on Going Too Far). At some point I checked this book out on Amazon and was completely bored by some of the other Michelle Obama biography covers: Michelle: A Biography features the most standard, boring portrait of Obama ever. Colbert's book however has a great dynamic close up of Obama. She looks so friendly and warm and inviting, who wouldn't want to pick up this biography?!

This is an easy, accessible biography, that I found notable because it doesn't shy away from the less-than-pleasant parts of Obama's history like you might expect a biography for younger readers would. Colbert traces Obama's roots back to the rice plantations of South Carolina, and mentions that, on her mother's side at least, there's a belief that she has at least one slave holder as an ancestor. Colbert's biography brings up the difficult question: "Would the slave have chosen this relationship? Was the slave too frightened to refuse?" Considering that to this day some people try to characterize Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings as having a true love affair, it's pretty bold to imply in a children's biography that slaves and their masters probably didn't have consensual relationships. So good job, Colbert!

Later on in the book, Colbert also touches on some of the problems the Obamas had in their marriage as Barack sought various public offices - Michelle didn't like always being the parent at home while her husband first worked 3 hours from Chicago, and then all the way in Washington D.C. Colbert also mentions the many things Michelle considered before she agreed that Barack should run for president, and among them was the fact that because of his race Barack was going to face more threats than the average presidential candidate. So there's some serious stuff in here that is presented plainly, but is never dwelt upon to an unnecessary extent.

I'm super excited to recommend this biography to anyone looking to learn more about Michelle Obama - or even Barack Obama, as naturally he features prominently in the latter part of the book!

Review: Almost Astronauts by Tanya Lee Stone

Winner: Siebert Medal 2010

I've never seriously wanted to be an astronaut - unfortunately, I'm one of those women who dropped out of math and science way too early to think of making a career of it. But I've always been fascinated with space (I blame family Star Trek nights as a child). Combine that with my desire to read anything about women's history I can get my hands on and Almost Astronauts becomes my kind of book!

Stone has packed a lot of history into a compact book, giving great descriptions of not only the physical astronaut trials the Mercury 13 women went through, but also the social and political trials they faced in daring to want to pilot a space shuttle. Stone does an excellent job conveying the various injustices these women faced; the jokes made at their expense, and the outright discrimination they received from the highest levels of government. Sprinkled throughout the book are also concise glimpses of what was going on for women outside of NASA in the 60s and 70s, so contemporary readers get the feeling that these women weren't only being shut out of NASA, but they were shut out of institutions we now take for granted (I don't know how I would function if I weren't allowed to do banking on my own without my husband's permission!)

Stone also follows up on the Mercury 13's history by showing what has happened for women in flight in the last 40+ years, from Sally Ride being the first female mission specialist (which was actually quite different from what the Mercury 13 were trying to accomplish - they wanted to be pilots, while Ride was a scientist. And important and exciting position, but her presence on the shuttle wasn't the success the Mercury 13 had been waiting for) to the first woman Thunderbird pilot. But Stone also isn't afraid to point out that everything is roses now - I was very happy when she pointed out that in media portrayals of contemporary astronauts, the men are still portrayed as heroes off to do a job while stories on the female astronauts tend to focus on their non-spaceflight hobbies and how their children will cope with Mommy being away. All too often these subtle forms of sexism go unnoticed, and while it's disheartening they're still there, we can't eradicate them if we don't recognize their existence.

Be sure to check out Stone's website for bonus material - poems that she wrote when she was originally envisioning this book as a children's poetry picture book. It's a fun addition to the text of the book - like an Easter Egg on a DVD, but more literary.

Almost Astronauts is absolutely a must read for anyone interested in space, NASA, and previously-unknown tidbits of women's history.

Review: Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher

Wow, that's a long title for such a slim book.

For years I've been fascinated by the life of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. They were a dynamic pair, and I think they always held my attention because they were a pair of women who lived their lives largely unaided by men - great role models for my young feminist self. Both women did marry, but they maintained a strong friendship and working relationship for almost fifty years.

This is a solid photobiography of Anne Sullivan's life, especially for younger readers who may know about Helen Keller but not so much about Anne Sullivan. There are lots of pictures, naturally, but they're not always the most compelling as the photography of Anne's lifetime didn't lend itself well to candid or action shots. The layout of the book is nice, though if you want to get the most of the photographs read it in a well lit area, as often they will layer sepia-toned photographs on top of each other, placing a letter or a picture of a house behind photos of Annie, Helen and other people in their lives. The sepia-on-sepia tones make it hard to see any details unless you're in direct light.