A Raging Success

As a child she loved Nancy Drew mysteries. She attended Southern Illinois University and studied Biology and Computer Science. After graduating she worked for a software company and did some technical writing. Her tech experience led her to write children’s books. That’s right – children’s books. We are talking about Andrea Beaty, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of two of our favourites, Rosie Revere, Engineer and Ada Twist, Scientist.

Like all great children’s books, her’s have such a strong message they resonate with both adults and children alike – stunning, witty inventions that honour pursuing one’s passion with persistence. But the reason I was attracted to her books in the first place went much deeper.

It was important for me to introduce my daughter to ALL career options, traditional, non traditional and everything in between. But I wanted to do it in a way that wasn’t really an option when I grew up. My first experiences with math and science were boring and uninspiring. For a child who naturally gravitated to language and loved being creative, they seemed terrible.

But looking back I have to believe that part of the problem was in the presentation. Topics that touch on science and mathematics can be incredibly inspiring, especially as they allow us to better understand and make sense of the world around us. However, for a little girl who loved playing princess and barbies, there wasn’t a lot of stimulating material for me. The math problems had no diamonds to count, the science experiments never included perfume mixtures and as for spaceships and astronauts – a lack of colour, style and romance had me running for the hills.

Yet here I am, at 47, writing sci-fi. Things have definitely come a long way, but we still have further to go. Just like Rosie and Ada in Beaty’s books, I had a lot of support to go ahead and be anything I wanted. More of this needs to happen in order to inspire ALL children to pursue their passion, one they might not have even considered. We need to reach them at their level, in accordance with their interests. And if I can inspire just one young “unlikely to write sci-fi” writer to give it a go, I will consider that a raging success.