Book Description
for Classified by Traci Sorell and Natasha Donovan
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Mary Golda Ross, a Cherokee woman, excelled at math from the time she was a teenager in the 1920s. Mary began attending college at 16, and later taught high school math and science before she began working as a mathematician for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Wanting to move into engineering, she took additional classes and was eventually selected to be part of a secret team researching orbiting satellites for the space race; their work was classified, and much of it remains classified today. Across her career, Mary helped recruit and support Native people and young women interested in engineering; doing so was one of the many ways she lived the four Cherokee values (humility, working cooperatively, gaining life skills in all areas, and helping others access equal opportunity and education). Pencil, ink, and digital illustrations accompany a narrative that ends with a timeline, author’s note, source notes, and bibliography, and the four Cherokee values in both the Cherokee syllabary and English. (Ages 7-10)
CCBC Choices 2022. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2022. Used with permission.