Girls & Young Women Inventing: Twenty True Stories About Inventors Plus How You Can Be One Yourself

by Frances A. Karnes, Rosemary Wallner, Suzanne M. Bean

Examines twenty young female inventors and their creations

168 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1993

About the author

Frances A. Karnes is professor of curriculum, instruction, and special education at The University of Southern Mississippi. She is widely known for her teaching, research, publications, innovative program developments, and service activities in gifted education and leadership training.

Reviews

[Debbie]

3.5 stars

This is a nice book with lots of stories about young women in leadership, volunteering, and activism. After each girl's story there are good thought questions for readers about "What you can do" and then a listing to "Find out more, get involved." Of course, having been published in 1993, it's all pretty dated. I wonder if there has been an updated version since then. Since that's the year I graduated high school, all the profiled young women are about my age. Made me wonder what's happened to them in these last 25 years!

And I had to laugh at myself because I considered myself a pretty active leader as a teen but was nowhere near most of these girls and even though it's so many years later, I caught myself feeling bad about not having done more.

[Holly]

Though the stories are outdated, this is an excellent guide to be used (by the adult) when leading a group (and I don’t think it has to just be a group of girls) through a leadership project. Each story concludes with a series of questions applicable to a specific leadership challenge. Pick and choose stories to review based on what challenges the group is facing with their own project. As suggested in the book, encourage the group to keep a journal of their leadership experience.