The Importance of Books

For the past two summers I worked as a teaching assistant for fourth grade reading, writing, and math. This summer, the students’ final project was a research presentation on an invention of their choice.

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We head to the library, where the librarian had pulled out a table’s worth of books on inventions. The kids browse the table, quickly grabbing the books that caught their eyes. They sprawl out to the side and thumb through pages about airplanes, windmills, bubble gum.

Half the period passes. One girl remains standing around the table. “Do you know what you want to research?” I bend down and ask.

She shakes her head. “Okay! Let’s start with the books about multiple inventions,” I say as I find titles like Becoming Ben Franklin and Famous First Facts.

I see myself in this young girl. Full of ideas, yet timid to raise her hand and ask for help or contribute her thoughts.

She reaches for the books cautiously, clearly disenchanted but feigning interest for my sake. Which is when I pull one final book from beneath the pile—— Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women.

Known as “the most famous 19th-century woman inventor,” Margaret E. Knight invented the automated machine to make flat-bottomed paper bags. In her research presentation, my fourth grade student included one of Knight’s quotes: “Ethical teaching is weakened if it is tied up with dogmas that will not bear examination.”

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I do not have the omniscience to say that this student will become a distinguished leader in the social movement. But I’d like to think that this project planted a seed of empowerment for this little girl. What I do know is that books like Girls Think of Everything are important. Representation is important.