The Girl Who Could Fix Anything: Beatrice Shilling, World War II Engineer by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Daniel Duncan

The Girl Who Could Fix Anything by Mara Rockliff,

illustrated by Daniel Duncan

Candlewick Press, 2021, 48 pages

I love picture book biographies that introduce kids to people and their achievements that they might otherwise never hear anything about. Case in point is this new biography about Beatrice Shilling (1909-1990) and her important WWII engineering accomplishments. 

Beatrice always seemed to be the person who was different. As a girl, she preferred tools to sweets, enjoyed taking mechanical things apart and putting them back together, often improving them. Instead of a bike, Beatrice began saving for a motorcycle at age 10. 

When she was older, Beatrice was eventually hired as an apprentice by one of the few woman engineers, Miss Partridge, whose job it was to bring electricity to people. And it was Miss Partridge who encouraged Beatrice to go to university to study engineering. Not surprisingly, she was the only female in the class. And also not surprisingly, despite graduating with honors in electrical engineering, only the men in her class could find jobs. 

Beatrice had to settle for a job writing handbooks about plane engines (I used to write handbooks for computer users, so I know just how bored Beatrice must have been). But eventually, she was given a hands on job, and met George, a man much like Beatrice, who became her husband. Beatrice loved her new job, but her expertise was really put to the test when WWII began and the RAF were losing pilots and planes when their engines suddenly quit in the middle of a dive during a dogfight.

Could Beatrice figure out how to solve the problem in a timely, cost effective way that wouldn't require taking apart the planes engine? Of course she could - and did. 

The Girl Who Could Fix Anything is a wonderful picture book for older readers. Rockliff shows readers that here was intelligent, persistent woman who followed her passion, loved to find out how things worked, and found ways to fix or improve engineering problems, but who also made mistakes, something I think is important for young readers to know about. The writing is light but informative, and the technical details, for example, the fix Beatrice came up with for the RAF, are presented in an easy to understand manner. The subtly colored digitally created illustrations completely harmonize with the text. Back matter includes an Author's Note that provides more about the life of Beatrice Shilling, as well as Selected Sources.   

The Girl Who Could Fix Anything is a book that should be in every STEM home, classroom, and school library. Beatrice Shilling is an inspiration to young girls everywhere who might just be a little different from their peers, having an interest in engineering and how things work. 

This book is recommended for readers 7+

This book was eARC gratefully received from Edelweiss+

Code Breaker, Spy Hunter: How Elizebeth Friedman Changed the Course of Two World Wars by Laurie Wallmark, illustrated by Brooke Smart

Code Breaker, Spy Hunter: How Elizebeth Friedman Changed 

the Course of Two World Wars

by Laurie Wallmark, illustrated by Brooke Smart

Harry N. Abrams, 2021, 48 pages

This picture book for older readers tells the story of a remarkable woman who developed new code- making and breaking techniques, helped capture bootleggers, and even managed to catch a few Nazi spies. 

When she was a child, Elizebeth Smith loved poetry and Shakespeare was her favorite author. She appreciated the structure and patterns she noticed in his poetry. Not surprisingly, Elizebeth graduated college in 1915 with a degree in English Lit, but she also studied Latin, Greek, and German. 

Looking for a job in Chicago, Elizebeth was introduced to George Fabyan, a wealthy eccentric Shakespeare fan who invited her to become part of a group of researchers on his estate, Riverbank, who were looking for proof that Francis Bacon was the real writer of Shakespeare's plays. Her job was to look for secret messages left by Bacon in the plays. Who knew this job would eventually lead to Elizebeth's helping to capture Nazi spies?  

Well, Elizebeth never found any coded messages but she did find friendship in the person of William Friedman, a scientist. The two friends spent part of their time together devising secret notes and challenging each other to decode them. Soon, they were in love and married. 

When the United States entered WWI in 1917, Riverbank was converted to a code-breaking unit called the Riverbank Department of Ciphers. Elizebeth, William, and their cipher staff set about decoding enemy communications and developing new code-breaking techniques. 

After the war, Elizebeth went on the work for the Coast Guard. They needed help with smugglers who were hiding bootleg liquor and communicating with each other using coded messages. Could Elizebeth crack the codes, so the bootleggers could be caught? She could and did, often testifying at the trials of the smugglers.

When the United States entered WWII, Elizabeth's code-breaking skills were once again needed. In 1942, she joined the newly formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and began setting up a code-breaking unit. Yet, when her decoding talents helped with the capture of some Nazi spies, the FBI director took all the credit for himself. Nevertheless, Elizebeth carried on and helped put American Velvalee Dickinson in prison for spying for the Japanese by decoding her letters about buying "dolls." 

Then came Germany's Enigma code-making machine, which created seemingly unbreakable codes. Thanks to a lazy Enigma operator, Elizabeth and her staff were about to break the codes after months of hard work. They didn't know that in England, code-breaker Alan Turing had also broken the Enigma codes.  

I loved the way Elizebeth's own words were strategically worked into the stylized watercolor and gouache illustrations so readers can get a real sense of who Elizebeth was and what she thought about the groundbreaking work she did. I also loved the ribbons of coded messages the wrap around a number of pages like a lasso capturing secrets, including the Nazis that Elizebeth's decoded messages helped catch. And if you are interested in trying your hand at decoding. those ribbons are coded messages. Check out the back matter for help solving them.

Code Breaker, Spy Hunter is a fascinating biography about a woman who did so much and received so little credit for her hard work. It is packed with interesting information about Elizebeth's personal and professional life. 

Besides information about Codes and Ciphers, back matter includes a challenge to Crack The Code, information on Cryptography Today, a Timeline and a Selected Bibliography.   

You can also find some Activity Sheets to download courtesy of the publisher, Abrams Books HERE 

This book is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was borrowed from the Queens Public Library

Instructions Not Included: How a Team of Women Coded the Future by Tami Lewis Brown & Debbie Loren Dunn, illustrated by Chelsea Beck

Instructions Not Included: How a Team of Women Coded the Future

by Tami Lewis Brwon & Debbie Loren Dunn,

illustrated by Chelsea Beck

Disney-Hyperion, 2019, 64 pages

Back in August, I reviewed a fun book called Cape (The Secret League of Heroes), in which three new friends discover they have superpowers and come to the rescue of the women who were working on a top-secret programmable computer called ENIAC in Philadelphia, in the hope that it could help win the war.

Now, in Instructions Not Included, meet three of the real women behind the computers that are so much a part of our daily lives. They are Betty Snyder, Jean Jennings, and Kay McNulty - three very different women from very different backgrounds with one thing in common - they loved math.

Which is how they found themselves in a secret lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where a hundred women called "computers" worked 24/7 solving math problems, after answering a January 20, 1942 ad in the newspaper. They were trying to figure out such things as which was the most effective angle to aim a gun and when was the best time to launch a bomb using pencils, paper and adding machines. Their goal - to win the war.

At the same time, upstairs even more top secret work was happening. A machine called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC for short, had just been built, and now it needed to make it work. Six women, including Betty, Jean, and Kay, found themselves in the upstairs computer room.

Their job now was to create a code that could be understood by ENIAC using mathematics so it could do the calculations that the women downstairs were working on but more quickly and correctly. Did they succeed? Yes, they did and in fact, if you read the Author's Note in the back matter, you will discover all the innovations that they went on to make in the burgeoning world of computers.

Instructions Not Included is the kind of picture book I wish I had had when I was teaching IT to young kids. What a difference it might have made in my classroom. I know it is a simplistic look at the contributions of the women who worked on ENIAC and paved the way for today's computers, but it is also a book that could be used to inspire young kids, especially girls, to think about mathematics in a different way. What counts is that all the important points about the work of Betty, Jean, Kay, and all the women who worked on this secret project are covered. And they are shown as having more interests than math - Betty played the double bass, Jean loved baseball and Kay just was good at everything she did.

The colorful, stylized illustrations have a very 1940s feel to them, and each of the women is seen dressed in the same color in each illustration, and where they are seen working on ENIAC - Betty is red, Kay is green, Jean is yellow. This not only individualizes the women, but it also helps the reader tell they apart, and, interestingly, works to show each women's movements, giving the illustrations a sense of motion.

As a picture book for older readers, Instructions Not Included is an important addition to the ever growing STEM/STEAM body of literature and is an inspiring book that should be used liberally by parents, teachers, and librarians.

You can find a very useful Educator Guide courtesy of the publisher, Disney-Hyperion, HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 6+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL