This book takes a subtler approach, mentioning segregation only once (at her new work assignment, "she ignored the stares and the COLORED GIRLS signs on the bathroom door and the segregated cafeteria") and the glass ceiling for women twice in a factual tone as potential obstacles that did not stop Johnson. Many biographies of black achievers during segregation focus on society's limits and the subject's determination to reach beyond them. Get to know this incredible and inspirational woman with this beautifully illustrated picture book from an award-winning duo.Ĭline-Ransome (Finding Langston, 2018, etc.) traces Johnson's love of math, curiosity about the world, and studiousness from her early entry to school through her help sending a man into space as a human computer at NASA. President Barack Obama awarded Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and her incredible life inspired the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. He knew that his flight couldn't work without her unique skills.
In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon and John Glenn said "get the girl" (Katherine Johnson) to run the numbers by hand to chart the complexity of the orbital flight. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws were in place in the early 1950s, Katherine worked analyzing data at the NACA (later NASA) Langley laboratory. Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. "Straightforward and inviting." - School Library Journalįrom award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome and acclaimed illustrator Raúl Colón comes the sensitive, informative, and inspiring picture book biography of the remarkable mathematician Katherine Johnson, one of the NASA "human computers" whose work was critical to the first US space launch.īefore John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Description "A detail-rich picture book." - Kirkus Reviews
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