The Adventures of Ruby Pi and the Geometry Girls

 I’m always looking for engaging historical fiction with strong female characters to add to my classroom library. The five stories in “The Adventures of Ruby Pi and the Geometry Girls” fit the bill. These vignettes into time and place each feature a strong girl who uses her brain to solve problems. Whether solving mysteries, bettering village life, or trying to stop a famine before it happens, these young women get the job done.

Each bite-sized story can be read in one sitting. Each of the characters is distinct in her time and place in the world. Some of the characters work within society’s constraints and others seem to work against barriers. I found some of the transitions in time a bit jarring, but this may have been because the Advanced Reader’s Copy didn’t have clear chapter divisions within each story. Really, each of these adventures could be expanded to a much longer telling of the tale.

I liked that the girls used practical applications of mathematics to solve problems in a no-nonsense way. Tom Durwood makes complex math accessible in these tales.

This book would be great for middle school and high school readers looking for bite-sized stories and strong female characters. I will get a copy of this for my classroom.

 

Thanks to #NetGalley and #BooksGoSocial for a copy of “The Adventures of Ruby Pi and the Geometry Girls” for review consideration. All opinions are my own.