Annotation and Comment: Patience Goodspeed, a math whiz, has experienced a great loss with the death of her mother. Shortly thereafter, her father orders her and her little brother along on a whaling expedition. Patience’s strong character and mathematical abilities are a great asset on the voyage. The conflict is one of the stronger elements of this story and the reader becomes concerned about Patience’s well-being fairly early on. This novel could be used in a cross-curricular reading assignment in a math class or used as an excellent piece of children’s literature in an English class.