Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/08/2022 Gr 1–4—Determination, passion, and intellect help fuel Mary Sherman Morgan from good to great! Morgan grew up in humble beginnings working on the family farm: "Until one day the sheriff and a social services woman came calling. They said eight-year-old Mary belonged in school. It was the law!" Once Morgan entered school, her passion for learning and especially science was sparked. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and she was forced to drop out of college due to the lack of funding. That didn't stop her from continuously seeking knowledge. When one door closed, Morgan looked for and worked hard for another to open. She eventually ended up at NASA, part of a mostly male workforce, but that didn't stop her from pursuing her dreams. Trial and error led to her big discovery of the correct fuel for America's first satellites. Slade dispenses the facts of Morgan's early years with ease, never glossing over the hardships, but they don't stop the story any more than they stopped this heroine. Comport's illustrations set the era with architecture and clothing, capturing the thrills of the dawning space age, and always capturing Morgan with an inner light despite adversity. VERDICT For all biography shelves, especially those covering the early days of the space program. Morgan's hardscrabble origins will inspire others to reach for the skies.—Amanda Austin - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 04/01/2022 The author of A Computer Called Katherine (2019) profiles another woman scientist who played a significant role in this country’s early space program—so unrecognizably that even Wernher von Braun had to address his thank-you letter to “Dear Unknown Lady.” Filling out the skimpy historical record with, she admits, bits of invented detail, Slade follows Mary Sherman Morgan from a North Dakota farm to a lab in California, where her “passion for chemistry” drove her to become “the rocket fuel expert” and to develop the powerful-yet-stable fuel that put Explorer I into orbit in 1958. Comport outfits Morgan in nerdy period eyeglasses, standing confidently next to the tools of her profession amid swirls of equations. The best clue to Morgan’s character, though, is embedded in the back matter, where, along with more about the satellite and the Juno I rocket, readers will learn that her original name for her fuel, Bagel (for its association with “lox,” the shorthand term for liquid oxygen) was rejected by the army in favor of the more “scientific”-sounding “hydyne.” - Copyright 2022 Booklist.