| ROCKET GIRL The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist George D. Morgan Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, July 2013 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-61614-739-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-61614-739-3 | 325pp. | SC/BWI | $18.00 | |
| Page 17: | "...a growing season shorter than a John Deere brake shoe." |
| Great line. |
| Page 17: | "Pitted with water-filled ruts, and combed with gouges from old tractors, car tires were known to disappear into this muck at random." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "this road had been known to swallow car tires at random". |
| Page 19: | "This is country; we have laws." |
| Missing word: S/B "is a country". |
| Page 20: | "Sinfully nearsighted, her eyelids were affixed in a near-permanent squint." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "her eyes were fixed". |
| Page 34: | "Tilting the bucket slowly, the raw milk poured into the machine." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "She tilted the bucket slowly, pouring the raw milk". |
| Pages 35-36: | "As I have mentioned, Mary Sherman Morgan never discussed anything personal to anyone, anytime, anywhere." |
| Word choice: S/B "personal with anyone". |
| Page 37: | "Not much of a TV watcher, nothing had clicked." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "I found nothing that clicked". |
| Page 44: | "Since rockets had not been included in the Versailles Treaty as one of the verboten weapons, it left a major loophole the German army was only too happy to jump through." |
| Number error, missing italics: S/B "one of the /verboten/ weapons systems". |
| Page 53: | "Mrs. Gudmund wore a wide smile and carried in her hands a black-and-silver device about the size of a Duckbill F-30 carburetor." |
| Another great line. I can almost see Mary as in Firefly. |
| Page 119: | "During those moments of intense pitch, John would guide himself by sliding his rifle barrel along one of the steel rails." |
| Missing word: S/B "intense pitch darkness". |
| Page 134: | "...I head home the same direction I arrived: alone." |
| Word choice: S/B "the same way". |
| Page 138: | "But for whatever reason, the secretary was unfamiliar with the abbreviation USSR, and assumed it was a mistake. Using her bold black pen, she 'corrected' the entry, changing it to read USA." |
| Missing comma: S/B "But, for whatever reason,". (And Irving Kanarek is no doubt grateful for the "correction.") |
| Page 168: | "All this von Braun-centric publicity created a quiet breech in the nation's space focus—a breech so subtle almost no one was aware of it at first." |
| Vocabulary: S/B "breach". |
| Page 172: | "The bad news could not have been worse for America's nescient space program..." |
| Spelling: S/B "nascent". |
| Page 172: | "Sinfully nearsighted, her eyelids were affixed in a near-permanent squint." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "her eyes were fixed". |
| Page 224: | "...a vast swath of flatland named after Mission San Fernando Ray de España: the San Fernando Valley." |
| Spelling: S/B "Mission San Fernando Rey de España". |
| Page 254: | "The American media was much more brutal." |
| Number error: S/B "were". |
| Page 257: | "When his phone rang with the warning, he had not been at those windows, sitting instead at his desk pouring over the latest engine-performance data." |
| Vocabulary: S/B "poring over". |
| Page 275: | "Its ascension seemed impatient at first, as if it wanted to take its time leaving Earth." |
| Word choice: S/B "patient" (or some better choice like "idle".) |
| Page 287: | "The condor folded her wings together, closed her eyes, and rested from its long journey." |
| Word choice: S/B "her". |
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