Extraordinary Women Explorers

by Frances Rooney

Overview

A thirst for adventure, a deep desire to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, and an innate curiosity about the world and its peoples drive the biographies of the ten women explorers profiled here. As explorers they bring skills in cartography, geography, history, anthropology, botany, photography, linguistics and writing to their travels. Their stories begin with Sacagawea, a Native guide in the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, and end in the present, with Mattie McNair and Denise Martin, the Canadian leaders of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. These are stories of women who dared to push beyond the safety of their own communities in order to live their dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926739199
Publisher:	Second Story Press
Publication date:	01/01/2005
Series:	Women's Hall of Fame Series , #6
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	118
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	9 - 13 Years

About the Author

Frances Rooney is a writer, editor, and spiritual director who lives in Toronto. Her books include Working Light: The Wandering Life of Photographer Edith S. Watson (published in Canada, the U.S. and Britain) and Our Lives (finalist for the Lambda Award).

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-7-Most of the dozen adventurous women described here had a few things in common: an insatiable curiosity, a need to challenge the mind and the body, and a desire to share with others what they learned. The entries are arranged chronologically, beginning with Sacagawea and concluding with Matty McNair and Denise Martin's 1997 British Women's Polar Relay to the North Pole. Other profiles include preacher and missionary Amanda Berry Smith, Canadian mountaineers Phyllis Munday and Sharon Wood, Inuit wilderness guide Ada Blackjack, French Buddhist traveler to India and Tibet Alexandra David-Neel, Near East enthusiast Freya Stark, and Irish bicycling explorer Dervla Murphy. Each account details some of the life-threatening dangers and extreme hardships these women endured to reach their goals. Remarkable photographs taken by American Edith S. Watson combine with the sensitive writings of her companion Victoria Hayward to record now-vanished ways of life and cultures of many Canadian peoples from the 1890s through the 1920s. Halftone photographs of the subjects, often in the field, and small sidebars of inspiring quotes or supplementary facts highlight the text. Rooney took much of her information from the women's own writings as evidenced by the list of resources appended. In size and scope, this work resembles many others on women explorers, discoverers, and inventors, but is certainly a valuable supplement to them rather than a duplicate.-Ann G. Brouse, Steele Memorial Library, Elmira, NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

"A fascinating book...The women covered range across history and a broad range of lifestyles. All of these women faced hardship and public disapproval to travel and see new places. As such, they are an inspiration to all women who hunger to go beyond the limits of their safe environments."

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