Environmental Activist Wangari Maathai (STEM Trailblazer Bios)

Swanson, Jennifer

ISBN 10: 151249982X ISBN 13: 9781512499827

Publisher: Lerner Publications ™, 2018

Synopsis

Have you ever tried to come up with ways to solve a problem in your community? Wangari Maathai worked to solve an environmental crisis and help people at the same time.

When Maathai was young, it was unusual for girls in Kenya to go to school, but she was determined to learn more about science and nature. As an adult, she noticed that people were cutting down too many trees. Maathai knew that forest loss was bad for the health of the environment and people. She started the Green Belt Movement, which educated women in rural villages and paid them for every tree they planted. The program helped plant millions of trees and brought money to the villages. For her environmental and human rights work, Maathai became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

About this title

About the Author:

Jennifer Swanson began her writing career at the age of five when she wrote and illustrated books for her kindergarten class. A self-professed science geek, Jennifer started a science club in her garage at the age of 7. She used to gather leaves and flowers and look at them under a microscope. Much to her mother's dismay, her prize possession was a cow skull that she found in a field down by the river. Her love of science continues to this day as when she is not writing, she loves to go out and notice the science all around her. Jennifer lives in Jacksonville with her husband and two dogs. Learn more about Jennifer at her website: www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

Review:

Prepare for ramped-up STEM engagement with the latest installment in the STEM Trailblazer Bios series. In four to five brisk, photo-filled chapters, entries showcase each innovator's early life, education, career, and groundbreaking achievements. Code-Breaker and Mathematician Alan Turing introduces the brilliant creator of the code-cracking Bombe machine. It's estimated that Turing's Bombe shaved at at least two years of WWII, saving approximately two million lives. Schwartz also addresses homophobia, the British government's 1952 condemnation of Turing, and his posthumous pardon decades later. In Environmental Activist Wangari Maathai, readers learn of the convention-shattering leader. Born in Kenya in 1940, Maathai valiantly combated countrywide deforestation through the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots tree-planting imitative. In 2004, Maathai became the first-ever African to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Google Cybersecurity Expert Parisa Tabriz spotlights the self-proclaimed "Security Princess," tracing her career from college computer-security club meetings to a post as Google's fiercest white hat. Science Educator and Advocate Bill Nye turns the lens on the beloved "science guy," an engineer who's developed suppressor tubes for Boeing, an Emmy award-winning PBS program, and two Mars-based sun dials. With boldface vocabulary words and boxed quotations throughout―as well as appended time lines, source notes, and further resources―these nimble bios are just the thing for mover and shakers in the making.

(Journal)

About this edition

• Publisher: Lerner Publications ™
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 151249982X
• ISBN 13: 9781512499827
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 32