Julia Cummins

Women explorers are often not well-known, and this book strives to share the stories of ten women who made contributed significantly to their chosen fields and accomplished feats on par with male explorers of their era. I found Nellie Cashman's story to be particularly interesting. Nellie, who was originally Irish, came to America and went west in search of gold. She explored the wilderness region of Cassiar, later found gold in the Klondike territory, and continued chasing the gold rush to Alaska. Nellie, as someone familiar with starvation during the Irish potato famine, dreamed of helping others. She saved many men in a mining camp suffering from scurvy by providing food and nursing them back to health. Nellie even opened up a restaurant in Arizona that provided good, inexpensive food for miners and even gave free food to those who could not afford it. Nellie achieved her dreams of escaping poverty, helping others, and living a life full of adventure. Nellie, along with the other women in this book, were selected to serve as inspiration to all of us and remind everyone that women have also achieved great things as explorers. Although I enjoyed the idea behind the book and the stories of some of the remarkable women, I did not love the author's writing style, specifically the humor that was attempted throughout.… (més)

I've come to the conclusion that there need to be about a billion more books like this. In US society we tend to assume "man" for "default human". Further, we tend to assume white, anglo-saxon, protestant, not-disabled, straight, middle-or upper- class, etc. It doesn't matter that one doesn't have to fit any of those criteria to be newsworthy or historically interesting. What matters, I think, is reminding everyone again and again if need be, that plenty of people have achieved interesting lives without fitting into some, or even all, of those norms. So bring them on, all the lists anyone can think of, all the people who are intriguing in whatever fields. Let the children's libraries of the US and other nations be chock full of increasing obscure lists of Women Athletes, POC Inventors, Non-Christian or Utterly Irreligious Military Heroes, Disabled Scholars, GLBTQ Entrepreneurs, Poor Scientists, and cetra. I'm confident that in some way everyone who ever lived was important and interesting, if only for never having been recognized as important or interesting, and I would like every kid, with whatever identities they may have, to be able to find people like them who have done fascinating things.

And also, I find books like this great fun.

Library copy.… (més)