Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor
by Emily Arnold McCully
As a child, I loved stories about iconoclastic women who accomplished extraordinary things. I sought out and devoured every juvenile biography I could find on Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Hellen Keller. If I’d come across Margaret E. Knight in my childhood readings, I would have pursued her too.
Born in 1838, precocious Mattie Knight began inventing things at a young age using the tools she inherited from her father, including toys for herself and her brothers and an innovative foot warmer for her mother. Because Mattie’s family was poor, at 12 she joined her mother and brothers in New Hampshire’s textile mills. While working there, she created a safer loom that saved lives, but didn’t patent it because she thought no one would give a patent to a young girl.
The design for her most celebrated invention, a machine that made paper bags, originally was stolen and patented by someone else. The story ends with Mattie waging a successful court battle to prove she was the rightful creator of the device, establishing her own company and working as “a professional inventor for the rest of her life.”
Detailed watercolor-and-ink images in muted tones illustrate the story, accompanied on several pages by black-and-white line drawings of Mattie’s inventions, including actual sketches from Mattie’s patent application for her paper-bag machine.
The story reflects misogynistic 19th-century views (“A girl couldn’t make that!”), even as Mattie proves them wrong. It’s a great lesson for kids that no one should be discounted for reasons like gender. Heck, why limit it to kids – this should be required reading for grown-ups out there who need a refresher course.
Note: reviewed by Deb Clark
Rating: *\*\*\*\
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