More Books About Female Scientists Needed
September 10, 2007
As the non-fiction coordinator for the upcoming Cybils awards, I'd like to join Loree Griffin Burns in a callout to authors and teachers regarding books and reports about women scientists. Loree links to an NSF report about girls and science that found that:
"By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. The drawings generally show an isolated person with a beaker or test tube. Any woman scientist they draw looks severe and not very happy."
Second grade! That's so demoralizing. Loree also talks about how:
"a friend’s fifth-grade daughter has to do a report on a scientist and the Famous Scientists List distributed by the teacher has only one woman on it?"
She proceeds to list a number of important female scientists, and urges her writer friends of all ages to get busy talking about these and other accomplished women. I also support this call.
The readergirlz postergirlz are looking for great non-fiction titles for teen girls, and I would love to see more books about amazing female scientists. (If you have any suggestions, please let me know).
And if you know of any great non-fiction titles for kids and teens published this year, regardless of topic (Loree's own book comes to mind, of course), save them up. The Cybils team will start accepting nominations on October 1st.