October 2023 is biography reading time. Or at least it was for me, especially online. Therefore, another online reader copy I found that was also a biography of someone I was unaware of, was Beulah Has a Hunch!: Inside the Colorful Mind of master Inventor Beulah Louise Henry. And this gal had a lot of hunches! She figured out issues that others did not see as issues, or felt it could not be done, or might have been specific to say women. But she would even be a pioneer in making the “blinking, moving, etc” dolls we had. And one thing Beulah was, was she was stubborn and she would not take no for an answer. The publisher’s description says she “thrived in a man’s world” and brought to light “neurodiversity before the term was coined.” She was different, and not just because she wanted to do “unlady-like things” (like science) she had hyperphantasia and synesthesia. And she took full advantage of her differences. She would celebrate that she saw things in full imagery in her mind, it just was not always easy to get it out, so she would work with others, and her ability to assign the patterns of colors to her works.
I say this is a great picture book biography about a woman we know little about but helped shape the world we have today. The interesting part is how (publisher description) she was featured in magazines for women, in magazines for scientists, and in local newspapers. Therefore she got recognition during her lifetime, even for the fact she would have more patents than any other woman, not just the inventions that those patents went to. Yet, she was lost to mainstream history. Therefore, again this is a good introduction to a woman that had science smarts and would have done well no matter what field she went into and Katie Mazeika gives us that look in a longer picture book due in mid-October 2023.
Mazeika also gives us the cool imagery that goes with their text. Boldly done, the art supports the story and is inspired by the personality of Henry themselves.
