The inspiring autobiography of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who helped launch Apollo 11.
As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math. In school, she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.”
In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects, including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon.
Katherine Johnson’s story was made famous in the best-selling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. Now, in Reaching for the Moon, she tells her own story for the first time, in a lively autobiography that will inspire young listeners everywhere.
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Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital trajectories for NASA were critical to the success of U.S. spaceflights. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Katherine the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Heather Alicia Simms is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, finalist for an Audie Award, and an actress. Her filmography includes Broken Flowers, Flutter Kick, Shock Act, Kingscounty, Head of State, Third Watch, and others. She also provided voice acting for the video game Red Dead Revolver.