Author: Kate Hannigan
Genre: historical fiction/superhero
Similar books: The Romeo and Juliet Code by Phoebe Stone
How I Became a Spy by Deborah Hopkinson Rating:
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| fun and empowering |
Summary (provided by publisher): Josie O’Malley does a lot to help out Mam after her father goes off to fight the Nazis, but she wishes she could do more—like all those caped heroes who now seem to have disappeared. If Josie can’t fly and control weather like her idol, Zenobia, maybe she can put her math smarts to use cracking puzzles for the government.
After an official tosses out her puzzler test because she’s a girl, it soon becomes clear that an even more top-secret agency has its eye on Josie, along with two other applicants: Akiko and Mae. The trio bonds over their shared love of female superhero celebrities, from Hauntima to Zenobia to Hopscotch But during one extraordinary afternoon, they find themselves transformed into the newest (and youngest!) superheroes in town. As the girls’ abilities slowly begin to emerge, they learn that their skills will be crucial in thwarting a shapeshifting henchman of Hitler, and, just maybe, in solving an even larger mystery about the superheroes who’ve recently gone missing.
Inspired by remarkable real-life women from World War II—the human computers and earliest programmers called “the ENIAC Six”—this pulse-pounding adventure features bold action and brave thinking, with forty-eight pages of comic book style graphic panels throughout the book. Readers will want to don their own capes for an adventure, and realize they have the power to be a superhero, too!
My opinion: Hannigan combines the excitement of superheroes, the complexity of life in wartime, and the inspiring tale of early women in STEM into a fun and easy to follow novel for upper elementary kids. These disparate elements don't seem like they would work together well but Hannigan makes it work. In large part this is because the focus is on everyday life. The focus is on people who are dismissive of these girls because of their gender and/or their age. This allows them to easily maintain the double life necessary for a superhero, not to mention the extra demands placed on people due to the war. On it's own, a plot about superheroes during World War II might not be anything special. By adding in a fair amount of historical information about ENIAC and the role of war on the beginnings of the computer age the modern reader can see the connection between this historical plot and their own life. The character development in this book is perhaps a bit thin but it's the first in a series, so we can expect to see increasing complexity in future volumes.
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