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Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition
Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition
Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition
Audiobook4 hours

Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition

Written by Margot Lee Shetterly

Narrated by Bahni Turpin

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

The uplifting, amazing true story—a New York Times bestseller!

This edition of Margot Lee Shetterly’s acclaimed book is perfect for young readers. It's the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program. 

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

This book brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who lived through the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the movement for gender equality, and whose work forever changed the face of NASA and the country.


LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateNov 29, 2016
ISBN9780062668585
Author

Margot Lee Shetterly

Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she knew many of the women in her book Hidden Figures. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research on women in computing. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Reviews for Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition

Rating: 3.9392689721698115 out of 5 stars
4/5

848 ratings53 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The story was so explained that it was like the movie and that was a great thing for the story to be about!

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It’s a good book that gives you a lot of information on 4 African Americans woman’s who achieve their goals on becoming a mathematician. This book also gives the background on how NASA came to be.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is so amazing and educational. It taught me a lot!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    So good! An amazing true story about some amazing ladies who paved the way for others. Plus, the space race! My children and I really enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it to others.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this was a great book, about the superheros that paved the way for Black Americans life today. Think of one of the biggest moment of the book, that is bypassed like a speed bump. Is in chapter fifthteen under the subtitle "The Sputnik Age" . Let me just say, doing this time other countries had noted are recognise the United States handicaps. And the News papers had talked about here in the US. "Until the United States changed its views on racial inequality and gave the same opportunities to all (Black Especially)students, it would never be able to lead the world. This was a Bombshell in itself. Hidden Figures in a Nonfiction Book, with historical facts, spoken and unspoken. I put "Black Especially", in my summary because, this is a Black book, talking about the lift trials and tribulations of Black Peoples. At a time when Blacks where being suppressed and a number of other events that could be another book. In bringing this to an abrupt close, I would resound a fact, "America wouldn't be were it is today if it wasn't for Black America."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Best Books Set In Each Of The 50 States - VirginiaThis is the first definitive history about the presence of black female mathematicians helping to send men to the moon. Overlooked, unknown and mostly forgotten, these women came from a time when running complex computations was considered "women's work". Hired during WWII to compensate for the lack of available men and later kept on to assist with the space race, they battled both racism and gender prejudice. Many of the women pushed on to achieve more in their careers than their employers anticipated. Although this is a very important part of American history, it was also a pretty dry book. I'm not particularly interested in mathematics or physics so long descriptions of their work didn't hold my interest. Still, I'm glad I read it as it changes my perspective on the time and the field.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read the young readers' edition to see how my students might react to the book. It is a worthy edition to the school library.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The movie didn't do this magnificent story justice.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Okay here goes. I expected more. It had the facts, and as important as they are to show the progress from such stupid ideas it really was kind of dull and longer than most of my 6th graders would last through. I will add it to my classroom digital library just because it will familiarize kids with the idea anyone can do anything even if things are stacked against you. But I don't foresee many reading it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think this book is definitely worth reading. It's important history. It's not what I was expecting though. It's a detailed non-fiction account. The movie previews made me feel excited so I was expecting that feeling from the book. This book doesn't have that personal connection feel that I think the movie probably does. (I haven't watched it yet, but I cannot wait.)
    This book tells about issues women and blacks and especially black women had trying to be engineers and work in higher mathematical and scientific positions. It also tells about certain women who broke through, their backgrounds and what jobs they did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wonderful book that looks at the impact, both in science and in society and within the culture of NASA, that Black women played through aircraft research during World War 2 and eventually the research for the space race. This is an amazing group of women who demonstrated not only highly developed skills in mathematics and engineering, but perseverance in an era when they faced sexism and racism. The story in Hidden Figures is inspirational for many reasons, and I highly recommend it, especially as motivation to those who have an interest in math, science, and engineering, but who may think they are not the right fit for those fields.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A compelling book that unmakes and remakes history, showing us the "hidden figures" who make up the great milestones of human existence.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really liked this, and I wanted it to be longer. I wanted more details about what the women were working on day to day, and I loved the bit in the afterward/author's note part that acknowledged how many stories had more to them that just couldn't be crammed into this book. I want those parts toooooooo. Anyway, it was a fascinating read with lots of really cool details.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an important read that uncovers a whole major slice of history that was untold for far too long. It is not a novelisation of the movie (the movie is based on the book), it is a biographical narrative and history book combined. It isn't one I could read quickly. It's factually dense and doesn't have a 'plot' as such. But it was truly enlightening, and goes into far more than just the space race. And you certainly don't have to be American to appreciate the content.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very interesting, but a little dry at times. Though, it's well worth the read as it's very important to understand the trials of women and black people. It's also a very good historical overview of NACA/NASA.

    I would highly recommend this for anyone interested in math, aeronautics, race relations, etc.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very important story. Endlessly inspirational and magical. The author effortlessly weaves in a compelling civil rights narrative with surprisingly fascinating mathematical prowess. And, she does so in a way that evokes interest in a field that most consider rote and monotonous. My interest was peaked in the field, as well as my admiration for the story of ethnic minorities rising above a system designed to be pitted against them. Most importantly, the theme of rising above what seems, and very well might have been, impossible is a narrative everyone can cherish.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I absolutely loved the movie and couldn't wait to read the book. It is full of facts and important information, but I sometimes found myself getting confused about the people I was reading about and found I absorbed more information when I read it during the day as opposed to before bed. It is a book that would be a wonderful resource to someone researching the time period or any of the topics covered in the book. A non-fiction read that will provide a clear picture of what NACA and NASA were like during the 1940s-1970s and I learned a lot about the black women (and women in general) who contributed so much to the space program.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good historical information; insightful perspective from African American woman, interesting development of NASA
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Great story and I loved learning about these women. I was just expecting more of a Narrative Nonfiction rather than the facts and figures I got.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A well-written history of the black women behind the visible men of NASA, their lives and contributions to American progress, and a clear case for the ways that structural racism and segregation has held that progress back.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really great story
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved the movie. Great book. As usual, the movie differs a bit from the book but not in a glaring way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    If you have seen the film, you may be disappointed by the book. In an attempt to describe the influence of women and blacks on the US aviation and space program the author gets lost in the details - to the point that the "story" doesn't flow clearly. This is an important story, but the book, for me, doesn't carry the message well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm late to the party, but still enjoyed this book very much. The author really did her research and wrote the story about NACA/NASA's black female computers in a smooth and informative way. There was enough explanation without getting lost or over simplified to follow along what Katherine, Dorothy and Mary did at their jobs and the issues they faced living in the segregated south.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a great book. It is very information dense, and I felt like I took more time than I usually do to read it, but I didn't want to miss a thing. Ms. Shetterly clearly invested a lot of time in her research and it shows. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I read this book because I enjoyed the movie so much. Unfortunately, the movie seems to have taken a Liberty Valance print-the-legend approach to the material, upping the drama by taking liberties with the facts. Shetterly sticks to the facts and outlines them in a dry, plodding and repetitive prose that made reading the book more than a bit of a chore. The subject matter remains a revelation and incredibly important, but I wish the reading experience could have been even partially as enjoyable as watching the film.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wished that I read the book first before I watched the movie. The movie was such a well done adaptation of the book, when I read the book, it takes a little effort to adjust to the documentery style narration of the book. It is well written, just got threw off by the movie.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book, but often felt that the amount of extraneous information that was given was just too much. I didn't know what information I needed to uptake and recall as I continued to read, as opposed to being able to just read and not try to hold onto. This book resonates similarly to Radium Girls, though I felt Radium Girls kept me more eagerly turning pages.I love hearing about the American space program. These women left their fingerprints on the space program, just as men left their footprints on the moon. Their story is triumphant.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As you might expect, this book plays out over a substantially longer period than the film based on it, which focuses on the space race. Even before that, black female mathematicians had a place at Langley, and navigated that place and its boundaries in various professionalized ways, usually by passive resistance to things like table signs indicating where “colored girls” should sit. It’s a story of mostly quiet dignity, hard work, and love for numbers.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I hate doing this. It is very rare that I will give up on a book. I finish what I start! But I just can't get through this one. The subject is very interesting to me but every time I sit down to read I either find myself drifting off thinking about something else I would rather be reading or falling asleep. Even worse it's my book club pick for this month.