The library is suddenly full of Ada Lovelace books: Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science; Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine; and Ada’s Ideas. So I was surprised at how much I liked the new one, Who Says Women Can’t Be Computer Programmers? The Story of Ada Lovelace, by Tanya Lee Stone.
Successful nonfiction picture books have a tight focus on a single theme. The tight focus of this book is the parenting conflict. Ada’s mother was panicked her daughter would end up a dissolute poet, like her father, Lord Byron. So, instead her mother trained her to be a rigorous, hard-working mathematician. When, as a child, Adad dreamed up flying machine in the shape of a horse, “Lady Byron increased Ada’s hours of math studies.”
Ada did become a fine mathematician, just as her mother had hoped, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t imaginative or capable of flights of fancy. In fact, her greatest contribution was in imagining the possibilities inherent in a theoretical computing machine. The concluding sentence of the book describes just what a special creature she became: “Ada, with her brain of a mathematician and her imagination of a poet.”
This is a book that celebrates the beauty and aesthetics of math. It’s a great one for girls who are interested in math but like to draw horses and invent stories, too.
Who Says Women Can’t Be Computer Programmers? The Story of Ada Lovelace, by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Christy Ottaviano Books: 2018.
Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!
