![]() ![]() It relied heavily on hunches.” That combination of math and intuition also emerges visually in several embedded graphics that assist readers in understanding the trajectories Johnson calculated. ![]() always involved more than mere number crunching. ![]() ![]() Phumiruk’s digital artwork convincingly portrays Johnson as brainy and imaginative, in keeping with the author note observation that “her role. After graduating college, she secured work at NACA (NASA’s forerunner) as a “computer” (as the humans who worked out the figures were known) in the opening years of the space race and eventually became so valued a team leader that John Glenn “refused to fly unless Katherine okayed the numbers.” Although Johnson’s contribution to the high-pressure rescue of the Apollo 13 crew is the climax here, the overall story is one of major historical developments: women mathematicians breaking into a men’s field Black scientists breaking into a white science world “computers” signifying humans with calculators pioneering space journeys undertaken with a knowledge base and skillset that today seem unthinkably scant. Children who want to share in the Hidden Figures buzz can start right here with a picture book biography of Katherine Johnson, who with the help of her determined parents leapt hurdle after hurdle in a racially separate and unequal educational system. ![]()
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