I am over the moon to share the news that The Astronomer Who Questioned Everything: The Story of Maria Mitchell (Kids Can Press) has been shortlisted for the 2022 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Children and Youth Book Award.
The SWCC is a national organization whose aim is to foster quality communication about science and technology to a non-specialist audience. Their annual book award for young readers includes among its selection criteria, “literary excellence and scientific content and accuracy…initiative, originality, clarity of interpretation and value in promoting greater understanding of science by the general reader.”
The Astronomer Who Questioned Everything is one of four short-listed books, alongside The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers: A Tour of Your Useless Parts, Flaws, and Other Weird Bits by Rachel Poliquin and Clayton Hanmer, The Girl Who Built an Ocean: An Artist, An Argonaut, and the True Story of the World’s First Aquarium by Jess Keating and Michelle Mee Nutter, and The Raven Mother by Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson) and Natasha Donovan.
As a lifelong avid reader of science (thanks to my dad for subscribing to Popular Science and Scientific American, and to my Auntie Marion and Uncle Winston for supplying me with an assortment of beautiful non-fiction books), it is a particular honour for me to be able to contribute as a writer.
Congratulations to all the nominees, and to my collaborators, illustrator Ellen Rooney, editors Jennifer Stokes and Olga Kidisivec, and the team at Kids Can Press. Above all, I am glad for the recognition that Maria Mitchell so richly deserves, and the affirmation that stories about the past can be relevant to our own time.
Laura Alary 