Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13, written by Helaine Becker and illustrated by Dow Phumiruk. Henry Holt and Company, Macmillan, Raincoast. 2018. $23.50 ages 8 and up

"The only things she didn’t count were the stars in the sky. Only a fool, she thought, would try that! Even so, the stars sparked her imagination. What was out there? Katherine burned to know as much as she could about numbers, about the universe – about everything! Katherine's boundless curiosity turned her into a star student. She was so bright, she skipped three whole grades."

The first time the general public really became aware of  Katherine Johnson was most likely due to the movie Hidden Figures in 2016. It garnered a lot of buzz with movie goers, and with many people who had not heard the story of the black women who worked for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in the early 1950s. It surprised many!

This book relates Katherine's story. As a child she proved daily how intelligent and focused she was. She loved numbers, and counted everything she saw. Her acumen and skills with numbers allowed her to skip grades in elementary school, and to graduate from high school when she was just 14. In order to do that, her family had to move a new town where she was able to attend a black high school. Luckily, that made all the difference.

"In those days, though, there were no jobs
as research mathematicians for women.
Professions most available to them were
teaching and nursing. So, Katherine became
an elementary school teacher. She liked her
job. And she loved her students. But she
never stopped dreaming of exploring numbers."

When one opportunity fell through in the field she wanted, she waited until another came up. The race for prominence in space, and the restructuring of NASA afforded Katherine a chance to prove herself. Confident, tenacious, and patient, Katherine was finally able to work as a human "computer". She worked with other women who had been given those jobs deemed boring and not at all important by men at the time.

Katherine's work on Project Mercury led John Glenn to refuse to go into space without her approval of the numbers. Her promotion to the Apollo program and its success was tested when Apollo 13 enccounterd a problem only Katherine could fix. Fix it, she did. What an accomplishment!

Illustrations created digitally emphasize the historical time period and Katherine's neverending love of numbers. 

Katherine Johnson died Monday, February 24, 2020. She was 101 years old. What an inspiration!