The Girl Who Could Fix Anything by Mara Rockliff illustrated by Daniel Duncan

The Girl who could Fix Anything - Beatrice Shilling, World War II Engineer

"Despite graduating with honours in electrical engineering and going onto earn her masters of science doing research on internal combustion engines, Beatrice found it hard to get a job in her field. Hearing that she placed first at Brooklands racetrack on a motorbike she had modified herself, one interviewer said, 'I suppose the men let you win."

As a young child Beatrice loved to pull things apart and put them back together. She clearly had an engineering mind. Luckily her mother and father were happy to encourage her even though it is early 1900 and girls do not usually study engineering especially not at a university. 

Beatrice is most famous for inventing the restrictor that saved the spitfire and Hurricane. In 1949 she was honoured by King George VI with the Order of the British Empire. 

Read more here:

Magnificent Women WES

Meet Beatrice Shilling Stemettes

Beatrice Shilling - Revolutionising the Spitfire

I hope this post amazes you.  I had never heard of Beatrice Shilling and yet she played a very important role in WWII and later she worked on runway safety and she designed and built a bobsled for the Royal Air Force Olympic team. 

In US schools students in Grade 4 or 5 study genre and in particular they study the genre of biography. Publishers have seen this gap in the market and so in recent years hundreds of wonderful picture book biographies have been published.  I have talked about a few here on this blog and my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything has an enormous collection of them in her library. She incorporates this topic into her work with her higher ability Grade 2 students. This new one about an amazing engineer Beatrice Shilling who was born in 1909 by American author Mara Rockliff and British illustrator Daniel Duncan.

Blurb from the author web site: Beatrice Shilling wasn’t quite like other children. She could make anything. She could fix anything. And when she took a thing apart, she put it back together better than before. When Beatrice left home to study engineering, she knew that as a girl she wouldn’t be quite like the other engineers—and she wasn’t. She was better. Still, it took hard work and perseverance to persuade the Royal Aircraft Establishment to give her a chance. But when World War II broke out and British fighter pilots took to the skies in a desperate struggle for survival against Hitler’s bombers, it was clearly time for new ideas. Could Beatrice solve an engine puzzle and help Britain win the war?

An appealing biography that will inspire young scientists and those who may quietly rebel against the status quo. Kirkus

"Text and pictures work together to capture the life and spirit of a remarkable woman....The text is lively and succinct, full of vigorous action verbs. The expressive illustrations convey time and place beautifully and are infused variously with humour (such as when apprentice-engineer Beatrice, helping to bring electricity to villages, falls through a ceiling) and drama (as in a stunning double-page spread of London aflame during the Blitz)." Horn Book

I've added this Daniel Duncan book to my "to read" list:

Baby Business by Jasmine Seymour

A baby is born. Welcome to the world little one. Women from the community gather to complete a ritual which is filled with hope for the future.  This book celebrates a smoking ceremony held by the women in an indigenous community.  For the smoke paperbark, termite mud and green leaves are used.

Each part of the process has a very important purpose:

Warm smoke:
on your feet "to connect you to Country."
on your chest "Care for your Country as it cares for you."
on your hands "Take what you need and no more.  Give back what you can ... "
on your mouth "Keep our language on your tongue."
on your ears "care for your totem (the bee) and do it no harm."

It is a reminder to readers of all backgrounds about the importance of acknowledging and celebrating our ancestors and the land from which we came and is the perfect springboard for discussions around how cultures welcome babies to the wider communities though events, ceremonies and symbols. Megan Daley


Baby Business is a book to share with children of all ages and it would also be the prefect gift to the family of a new baby.  You can listen to an extensive interview with Jasmine from the ABC. Megan Daley has interviewed Jasmine about her book Cooee Mittigar. I hope both of these books are included in the 2020 CBCA Notables list and from there the 2020 short lists.

What would she do? by Kay Woodward

I don't usually comment on the price of books but this book is such good value at only $20.  It is book to dip into and then revisit.  The illustrations are are wonderful and each of the 25 women is given a detailed profile along with a real-life 21st Century problem for the reader to solve.  I did enjoy the quiz at the end which has 8 "multiple-choice questions to find out which fabulous woman you are most like".  I am like Harriet Tubman because "I enjoy helping others."

There are quite a few new books available on this topic but I feel the links to real life problems and the vibrant illustrations make this one a stand out. Eight illustrators contributed to this book.  If you have an art class in High School is would be well worth taking time to check out each of these links.

Andrew Archer from New Zealand
Anna Higgie from UK
Jessica Singh originally from Perth Western Australia
Jonny Wan lives in UK
Kelly Thompson from Melbourne Australia
Pietari Posti lives in Spain
Sofia Bonati lives in UK
Susan Burghart lives in UK

The contents of this book are presented in chronological order from Cleopatra and The Trung Sisters who took action in Vietnam 2000 years ago right through to Malala Yousafzai.  Each woman has a short introduction, a more detailed profile and a "what would ... do? page.  I was particularly fascinated to read about Dame Zaha Mohammed Hadid - Architect, Valentina Tereshkova - Cosmonaut and Elena Cornaro Piscopia - Philosopher.

We have excellent single biography picture books in our school library about some of the other famous women in this book - Rosa Parks, Wangari Muta Maathai, Dr Jane Goodall, Emmeline Pankhurst, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace.  Hopefully reading What would she do? will inspire students to read further.

Here is a short trailer from the publisher where you can see some of the art.

Rachel The story of Rachel Carson by Amy Ehrlich illustrated by Wendell Minor

My friend at Kinderbooks with everything has inspired me to add more biography titles to our library especially those in a picture book format.

For summer holidays my family always rented the same little beach side cabin and one memory I have from this time is finding a copy of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson on the shelves.  I know I read some of it although I am sure it was mostly beyond me.  I do remember the main themes though, of the interconnection of life and the terrible damage wrought by insecticides on all parts of the food chain.

Silent Spring remains one of the most effective denunciations of industrial malpractice ever written and is widely credited with triggering popular ecological awareness in the US and Europe. 

This book Rachel - The story of Rachel Carson is the perfect way to introduce this important activist to students.  The book begins in 1912 when Rachel is five.  On the subsequent pages we follow a chronology of her life and each episode serves to build up a picture of why Rachel wrote her most famous book Silent Spring.   "She called it silent spring because if all the birds were killed, their songs would not be heard in springtime."

Here are a set of teaching notes for this book.  This book could be used with children from Grade 1 right up to Grade 6.

The illustrations by Wendell Minor are perfect :

His sun- and moonlit scenarios, particularly two wordless spreads, fittingly display the striking beauty of the landscapes and seascapes that so inspired this courageous crusader.

The Fossil girl Mary Anning's dinosaur discovery by Catherine Brighton

This time last year I visited Lyme Regis.  I was keen to go to their little museum because I use an old program called A skirt Through History with my students.  The episode entitled The Wreckers focuses on the suffragettes and in particular on one lady called Sarah Bennett.  In the program it says we would not know about her involvement with the movement to gain the vote were it not for her diary which was found in the Lyme Regis museum.

Sadly I found no trace of this diary but I did find out a little more about another lady called Mary Anning who discovered an important dinosaur fossil in 1810.  The Lyme museum is built on the site of Mary Anning's original home. Women who were involved in early scientific discoveries have always fascinated me.  Did you know Beatrix Potter was a keen scientist who studied mushrooms and toadstools?

I have been reading the Kinderbookswitheverything blog where my friend talks about using simple biographies with her students.  When I saw one about Mary Anning I knew it would be terrific for our library.

This book uses a graphic novel style to explain how Mary and her brother came to find the fossil of an Ichthyosaur and how this find helped her family business selling 'curiosities'. You can read more about Mary on the Natural History Museum web site where I was lucky to see her portrait last year.  Here is a link to the author web site.  This book would be perfect for young dinosaur fans and for students who are interested in paleontology.