Reaching for the Moon by Katherine Johnson

Title:  Reaching for the Moon:  The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson

Author:  Katherine Johnson

Read by:  Heather Alicia Simms

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 5 hours and 18 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank-you!

I read and loved Hidden Figures a few years ago and also loved the movie.  I was delighted to be able to listen to and review the audiobook version of Katherine Johnson’s autobiography.  I was sad to learn of her passing last week, but inspired to finish this audiobook.

Katherine Johnson was a mathematically gifted girl.  Through her parents’ hard work and sacrifices, they were able to put Katherine and her three siblings through both high school and college in West Virginia in the 1930s.  This was quite the feat for the time.  None of my Grandparents or Great-Grandparents attended college.  While at school, it was noticed that Katherine was gifted.  She graduated from high school at 14 and college at 18.  One of my favorite quotes in the book is when Katherine believes her brother was “slow” as he graduated at the normal ages.  She realized as an adult that her brother was actually quite smart.  Katherine tells the story of her marriage, children, working as a teacher, and eventually of her working at NACA, which eventually became NASA.  She had a love for analytical geometry and was able to use that passion to help ultimately to put a man on the moon. 

Katherine Johnson’s story was fascinating and uplifting.  I read every biography in my school library when I was in elementary and middle school.  Most women biographies were about wives of famous men, there were only wo about African American ladies (Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth), and there were none about mathematicians.  I am an engineer myself.  I sure wish I would have had this autobiography to read as a child.  Johnson talks about her love for math and about her persistence and hard work to be able to be in the profession that suited her.  I loved her father’s motto that became Katherine’s own, “you aren’t better than anyone, but no one is better than you.”  Johnson also talks about race relations in America and how it impacted her life.  It was an important story and one that I think everyone should read.

This book was written for middle school aged kids, but I enjoyed it as an adult.  My 11-year old son, Daniel, used the book as one of his resources for a poster he did for school about Katherine Johnson.  She is an inspiring role model.  It’s really made me think about how many women and minorities were part of major parts of history, but their roles were overlooked and not put into our history textbooks.   Heather Alicia Simms was the narrator and to me was the voice of Katherine Johnson.

Overall, Reaching for the Moon is an important part of our American history and is an important autobiography.  I loved this audiobook and only wish we had a second part for more of Katherine

Johnson’s life after the mission to the moon.  I did love her epilogue.