School Library Journal (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Gr 3-5--Scary Stories 3 is here! And it was worth the wait. Schwartz has once again created a crowd pleaser with these 25 short stories that include everything from confronting death to jump tales. There are six major categories of gore with one to eight concise tales in each to delight horror lovers. The selections are straightforward and to the point, allowing readers to put their imaginative skills to full use. The book is well paced and continually captivates, surprises, and entices audiences into reading just one more page. Gammell's gauzy, cobwebby, black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings help to sustain the overall creepy mood. To complete the picture, source notes explain the origins of each story; a comprehensive bibliography includes materials for adults and children. This will be a well-used addition to all collections. Children who have read and reread and reread Schwartz's other books will appreciate this new offering. Teachers will use it in their classrooms as a read-aloud. Storytellers will make these tales part of their repertoires. Definitely a first-purchase consideration. --Molly Kinney, formerly at Miami Dade Public Library System, Miami, FL

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Shetterly, founder of the Human Computer Project, passionately brings to light the important and little-known story of the black women mathematicians hired to work as computers at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Va., part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NASA's precursor). The first women NACA brought on took advantage of a WWII opportunity to work in a segregated section of Langley, doing the calculations necessary to support the projects of white male engineers. Shetterly writes of these women as core contributors to American success in the midst of a cultural "collision between race, gender, science, and war," teasing out how the personal and professional are intimately related. She celebrates the skills of mathematicians such as Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Hoover, whose brilliant work eventually earned them slow advancement but never equal footing. Shetterly collects much of her material directly from those who were there, using personal anecdotes to illuminate the larger forces at play. Exploring the intimate relationships among blackness, womanhood, and 20th-century American technological development, Shetterly crafts a narrative that is crucial to understanding subsequent movements for civil rights. A star-studded feature film based on Shetterly's book is due out in late 2016. (Sept.)

Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review On a trip home to Hampton, Virginia, Shetterly stumbled upon an overlooked aspect of American history that is almost mythic in scope. As the daughter of an engineer who became a highly respected scientist, she was aware of the town's close ties to NASA's nearby Langley Research Center and also of the high number of African Americans, like him, who worked there. What she did not know was that many of the women, particularly African American women, were employed not as secretaries but as "computers": individuals capable of making accurate mathematical calculations at staggering speed who ultimately contributed to the agency's aerodynamic and space projects on an impressive scale. Shetterly does an outstanding job of weaving the nearly unbelievable stories of these women into the saga of NASA's history (as well as its WWII-era precursor) while simultaneously keeping an eye on the battle for civil rights that swirled around them. This is an incredibly powerful and complex story, and Shetterly has it down cold. The breadth of her well-documented research is immense, and her narrative compels on every level. With a major movie due out in January, this book-club natural will be in demand.