The Math Book for Girls and Other Beings Who Count

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In 1993, Valerie Wyatt published The Science Book for Girls and Other
Intelligent Beings because, even in the early 1990s, barely 10 percent
of post-secondary science or technical students in Canada, the United
States, and Great Britain were female. This meant that scores of
high-paying professional career choices, ranging from engineering to
medicine, would continue to be dominated by men.

Wyatt has written this second book with the same goal—to encourage
young girls to enjoy math and to consider a rewarding career where good
math skills are required. To make math interesting to her readers, the
author uses a number of writing devices. One is to write in the
second-person tense to make readers feel as if the book is about them.
Another is NORA (Natural Observation Research Activator), a
frizzy-haired pixie in a lab coat who keeps asking oddball questions
like “Would you be able to fit into your favourite doll’s
clothes?” (the answer in this case takes the reader through the
scientific fields of measurement and proportion). Another tool is the
use of numerous sidebars that point out how women in many fascinating
careers (computer programmers, veterinarians, artists, zoologists,
architects, financial advisers, cryptographers) need math to do their
jobs.

Wyatt’s prose is fun and informative and spiced with humor. More
laughs are supplied by Pat Cupples’s zany illustrations. A third book
in the series, The Technology Book for Girls and Other Advanced Beings,
is planned for 2001. Highly recommended.