Book of the Week: Wonder Women

I know, I know, I know.  This is a day late.  I have excuses – relating to post nightshift haze and then a few days away and only remembering I hadn’t written this post at 11pm after a couple of cocktails.  And as drunk blogging doesn’t end well, I thought it could wait til the cool light of day and rational thought, especially as this week’s pick is Important to me.

So this week’s BotW is Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors and Trailblazers who changed history.  Written by Sam Maggs, this is a series of potted biographies of women who you may not have heard of, but who have played an important role in various areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Espionage and Adventure  – aka areas that tend to be seen as traditionally masculine.  There are 25 featured women – but at least the same again get bite-sized mentions too.  I’m a history graduate (admittedly specialising in British and European history) and there were a lot of names here that I had never come across before – and many fascinating stories.

I’m definitely not the target market for this – which is written (I think) very much with tweens/early teens in mind – and some of the language started to annoy me a little, but that’s because it’s written in a vernacular that is not really mine, although I do think that the choice of language will appeal to the intended audience. It’s got lovely illustrations for the 25 women, which is a nice touch.  My copy was an e-galley for my kindle e-reader so I don’t think I got the full effect, but from what I’ve seen the actual book itself looks attractive and appealing.

This would make a good book for an upper-primary school/middle school age girl and would also be a great addition to school libraries for that sort of age of child.  I’ve said there that it would be a good book for a girl – because I think young girls need reminding that they can have adventures too, and be brave and daring and that careers in things like science and tech aren’t just for boys.  But boys need reminding that too – and that there have been women through history doing important things, often against the odds and against societal expectations.  I saw this video last week, and it may have been the nightshifts, but it got me all emotional.  And it’s an important message for children to get – girls can be anything, do anything – nothing is a man’s job – or a woman’s job.

Anyway, lecture over.  As I said, my copy was an e-galley via NetGalley, but this is out now and you can get it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles as well as on Kindle and Kobo – although I think it would look best in the hardback actual book.

Happy reading!