Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women - Hardcover

Thimmesh, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395937442 ISBN 13: 9780395937440

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000

Synopsis

A fascinating collection celebrates the clever and creative inventions of women from candles, helmets, and baby carriers to cancer-fighting drugs and details their fierce determination to overcome many hurdles to make their dreams come true. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Catherine Thimmesh lives in Minneapolis, Melissa Sweet lives in Rockport, Maine, and is the illustrator of many fine children's books. Her spirited and warm collage illustrations have appeared in cookbooks, notecards, posters, and private collections. Minnesota, with her husband and two young children.

From Booklist:

There's no organization to speak of, neither chronological nor alphabetical. However, this very attractive, informative book will find an audience among browsers and report writers alike. Ten women and two girls are given a few pages each. Included are Mary Anderson, who invented the windshield wiper (after she was told it wouldn't work); Ruth Wakefield, who, by throwing chunks of chocolate in her cookie batter, gave Toll House cookies to the world; and young Becky Schroeder, who invented Glo-paper because she wanted to write in the dark. The text is written in a fresh, breezy manner, but it is the artwork that is really outstanding. Melissa Sweet's mixed-media collages almost jump off the pages. For instance, the chocolate-chip cookie recipe is handwritten on a card, which sits on the page of an old cookbook, pasted to a wooden cutting board, set against an old-fashioned tablecloth. Watercolor portraits of the inventors also appear in each chapter, along with historical material or drawings of individual objects. The endpapers list women inventors, beginning at 3000 B.C., when silk was invented by a Chinese empress. The final section tells girls how to patent their inventions, and an informed bibliography and Web site list will help them do just that. Ilene Cooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0395937442
• ISBN 13: 9780395937440
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 57
• Illustrator: Sweet Melissa