Review Detail

Girls Solve Everything: Stories of Women Entrepreneurs Building a Better World

Middle Grade Non-Fiction 687

From the Creators of Girls Think of Everything!

April 07, 2022

Overall rating

4.3

Writing Style

5.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

Learning Value

4.0

In this book by the team behind Girls Think of Everything (2000), we are introduced to more women who embody the innovative spirit. It has a very similar format of mixed media style, and the pages have well spaced print intersepersed with colorful graphics. The women covered range from the well known, like Jane Addams (although a teacher the other day didn't know who this was!) and Florence Nightingale, to lesser known, current change makers like Komal Ahmad, who is addressing food insecurity.

There are a wide variety of women profiled, and it's good to see that in the last twenty years there has been more inclusion of women from around the world. Jeroo Billimora works with street children in India, Radwa Rostrom works with sustainable housing in Egypt, and Wangari Maathi (who is also the subject of a great biography by Eucabeth Odhiambo) was an environmentalist in Kenya. Some of the women will not be known to some readers, and some are involved in current projects that might not be as well received by all readers, such as Teach for America.

Good Points

Girls Think of Everything has been a constantly popular book in my library, so I was pleased to see another volume about women innovators.

I liked the fact that there is a section on how readers might change the world themselves, and there is a good list of resources, as well as a helpful bibliography and glossary. The end papers of the book are a quiz on women's history, which was an unusual touch.

For public libraries, where it's important to have current collective biographies, will want to look into this title for readers of books like Alexander's Generation Brave: The Gen Z Kids Who Are Changing the World, Favilli's Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World, or Li and Blackwell's Rise Up: Ordinary Kids with Extraordinary Stories.