Margot Lee ShetterlyBesprekingen

"Hidden Figures" tells the inspiring true story of Black women mathematicians who played pivotal roles in America's space exploration during the 1960s. Authored by Margot Lee Shetterly, this book skillfully weaves together historical facts and personal narratives, making it both informative and captivating. It's a valuable resource for students, offering a window into the challenges faced by minorities in STEM fields and the power of perseverance. Through discussions and reflections prompted by this text, students can explore themes of diversity, gender equality, and the importance of recognizing overlooked contributions in history. Moreover, it encourages deeper research and inquiry into the lives and legacies of these extraordinary women.

I saw the movie and decided to read the book. Though the movie dramatised the story, it brought it to life. In comparison, Margot Lee Shetterly's writing was rather dry. Nevertheless, without her, most of us wouldn't have known the role of both black and white women in NASA's development.

From Kirkus: "An important story to tell about four heroines, one that will lead young readers to the longer, more-nuanced coverage available when they are ready."

Hidden Figures mainly tells the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson, African-American women who set the precedent for other black females to follow in the fields of mathematics and engineering at NASA. There are a couple of other women that the book touches on but not as in-depth as these three amazing women.

NASA, when these women started working there, was known as NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics). During WWII, NACA hired women as female computers who essentially did the work of mathematicians but were paid less.

I enjoyed how this book relayed the stories of each woman; however, I felt that it was a dry read overall. It is not like the movie although there are some aspects of the movie in the book. I liked the Epilogue at the end which discussed these women and their lives after they retired.

Picture book format. Includes timeline, author’s note, and brief biographies

I love learning about women, and minority women especially, absolutely crushing it and just being invaluable in untold ways. These women are so impressive, not just for their race or gender but for the spectacular grasp on math that they had. They were brilliant clearly intimidating to their white male coworkers. I felt like their stories didn't have the teeth I expected, so it wasn't quite as gripping as I had hoped. Not that I want anyone to relive their racial trauma, but it was a surprisingly civil work environment for the time? I have to imagine they left a lot of the pain out of their stories to remain more palatable.

So to be fair I bought this on audible when I had to use a credit quickly and given the "Hollywood" cover I assumed it was a narrative... oops! Once I got over the initial shock of it being very nonfiction research I did enjoy learning about these amazing women and all they accomplished in so many areas. Since I listened to the book keeping the stories straight as the author hopped around the different women was difficult.

I should have loved this book. I wanted to love this book. It tells us of extraordinary women breaking boundaries of math, science, race, sexism, and culture through their brains and grit and determination and the brilliance to recognize an opportunity and drive the wedge of themselves into it and make a place for themselves and their children to follow. Unfortunately, the storytelling is so dry and the narrative so disconnected that I really struggled with it. Perhaps this would have been better in a bound version than audio, I don’t know. Nevertheless, I recommend making the effort. I’d never heard of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, or Christine Darden before, and that’s a damn shame. I’m glad I know their stories now.

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library. Robin Miles provides an excellent performance.

I sadly had not known the story of these four women before reading this. To be honest, I do not know much about my country’s history regarding monumental moments such as the space race. This biography helped me understand and made me want to learn more. The strength these four women had, as well as all the women in their various departments, to not only speak up and show their worth in a time where not only women but black women were seen as less, was inspiring. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the internal workings that allowed us to not only launch into space but also land on the moon. Those beginning calculations helped shape and progress so much more in the world.

This one almost ended up on the DNF list, but I slogged through it (it did make good "put me to sleep before bed" reading).
As another reviewer noted, the story of the female computers, especially the Black women, and their role in NACA/NASA is a story that needs to be known, but that does not mean THIS book is any good.
There are several problems with it.
1) The author is tackling too many topics at once. Is this a book about the space race? Is it about racial injustice? Is it about gender equality? Is it about life in the 1950s? Is it about three or four women who are excellent with numbers? Unfortunately Shetterly tries to make it about all of these things and the individual topics get lost as they all shout for attention and you don't know where to direct your attention.
2) Sentence structure. Excellent examples of over-writing. In an attempt to add visual and personal interest, too many dependent clauses find themselves embedded into compound-complex sentences containing flowery adjectives...(I tried to imitate her style writing that sentence, but I couldn't do it and didn't care to work harder) Once in a while such a sentence works. When most of the sentences are 3-4 lines long and the point gets lost in the details. It's hard to read that style of writing. Dickens can get away with it because of his wit and the time period in which he wrote. Few writers today can, and Shetterly definitely can't.
3)There so much data and history -- it's as though all of her research had to go into the book and she couldn't bear to cut out a single researched fact.
4) It's devoid of emotion. There are so many people mentioned in such an arm's length away style that there's no opportunity to connect with any of the characters. Bio facts are given, segregation facts are given, but no sense of how the people felt about their struggles. It's like watching story through binoculars, rather than a camera lens.
5) Too many "name drops" about figures that might be known to those well-versed in the history, but not outsiders like me. It made the characters disappear into the sea of names because I lost the ability to know which names I'd need to learn and which were one-off mentions. Maybe she included the names so she'd have a bigger index or get more hits in a keyword search?

I slogged through the book and picked up The Calculating Stars to read at the same time. WAY better and that sci-fi book helped me understand some of the key parts of Hidden Figures that got lost in the pile of information. Read The Calculating Stars instead. For this one, I hear the movie is actually pretty good.

Hidden Figures tells the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African-American women who blazed the trail for others to follow in the fields of mathematics and engineering at NASA. And while this is an incredibly important story in American history and in the history of the space race, I found Margot Lee Shetterly's book to be a bit dry. It wasn't terrible by any means but I would suggest watching the excellent film based on this book as opposed to reading this. Read this only if you really must supplement your film viewing experience.

Independent Reading Level: Grades 3-6
Awards: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work

Independent Reading Level Grades 3-5
Based on the New York Times bestselling book

Independent reading level: Grades 3-6
Awards:
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction

If you have seen the movie first, do not expect a strong single narrative through this nonfiction work. For the movie, they had to focus on the intertwining of just 3 of the stories of the black women computers, mathematicians, and engineers in this work. This text does a good job of looking at the macro, meso, and microlevels: the women and their families; the segregated school systems and the HBCU system; social segregation; individual, collective, and systemic work to dismantle segregation; and how the STEM fields can both continue discrimination and counter it. For those working on DEI in STEM, this is a must read.

A review written by Carmen pretty much sums up how I felt about this book, so take a look at that review for more detail.

To summarize: incredibly important and fascinating history but not well written.

Don't be me and think that the "young adult edition" is the same book, just reformatted -- the "young adult edition" is an extremely dry book with full chapters about extraneous topics such as the history of the Great Depression. It reads like a history textbook. I'm going to try again with the real thing.

There's not much to say about Hidden Figures that hasn't already been said, but I still found the story of how African American female mathematicians left behind their families and hometowns to seek their fortune doing calculations on bomber planes to win WWII, in a time that there was still segregated lunch tables and African American women could expect to make a pittance. It's amazing to read about the women, who despite these circumstances, forcibly integrated grade schools to earn their PhDs and persevered for years to be recognized as engineers and included on literary papers. I liked that Shetterly chose to focus on a few key characters as a way of humanizing the story, although I agree that the character development was pretty weak, and especially the side characters tended to blend together.

As a side note, I DNF'ed the young adult version and, having read the real thing, I completely stand behind that choice. What were they thinking? Young adults are not more attracted to drier books stripped of characters.

I saw the movie, but as many pointed out it had a white-savior feel to it. So I was excited to read this book about not 3, but 4 incredibly smart Black women. I know how important it is for young girls to read books about women in STEM. I think would be very inspirational for young readers.

I wanted to like this, and I really hoped that it would be something I could enthusiastically recommend to my students. Unfortuantley, reading this was a bit of a slog. This book was more data dump, less story.

This book is about the four black women who helped NASA launch people into space.
6-8
Informational
Timberland Regional Library

Description: Discover the inspiring true story of four black women mathematicians who played pivotal roles at NASA during the space race.
Age Group: 4-8 years

Ages 6-10
Awards: the New York Times bestselling book and the Academy Award–nominated movie, author Margot Lee Shetterly and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award winner Laura Freeman

This book is the stories of women of color in a field that disvalued them but against all odds succeeded because of their passion for math.

Fascinating history of NASA mathematicians who helped in the space program - human computers.