Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain (written by Cheryl Bardoe) is the story of the groundbreaking self-taught mathematician and physics pioneer Sophie Germain, whose work on the concept of vibration patterns made her the first woman to win a grand prize from France’s distinguished Royal Academy of Sciences. It’s a truly inspiring story of a brilliant woman whose gender, unfortunately, kept her on the fringes. We have Germain and her sound vibration equation to thank for the Eiffel Tower, as well as contemporary skyscrapers, bridges, and other marvels of engineering. Illustrator Barbara McClintock incorporates collages into her watercolor illustrations for Germain’s story — and on such a warm, lustrous palette that the art seems, in spots, to shine from the page.

The story begins in Germain’s girlhood in Paris during the French Revolution, where we learn that she had to be secretive about studying mathematics  and, later, was unable to attend university — all because she was a woman. She managed, however, to obtain notes and study on her own. She submitted her work via mail, signing her papers with a male pen name, and continued with this pseudonym (even after eventually being revealed in Paris as “the girl prodigy”) until her historic submission to the Royal Academy.

The author writes quite lyrically here about math, using repetition and bird imagery (“Telling Sophie not to think about math was like telling a bird not to soar”), emphasizing that math is a thing of beauty and wonder (math is no less, she writes, than solving the very “secrets of the universe”). Illustrator McClintock had a formidable task here — to translate into pictures the author’s imagery (and there are, indeed, some beautiful birds, including one moment where birds morph into pages and pages of math equations) as well as to capture the wonder of math communicated in this story. She does this — plus some.

And by “plus some” I mean that McClintock truly extends the text here by making math visible on the very page. That is, formulas, equations, and even the motions that send vibrations “surging through nearby objects” are all depicted here with eloquence. In the hands of a lesser artist, such illustrations could be too crowded and difficult on the eyes, but McClintock makes wise decisions about composition. All in all, she manages to capture not only the time period but also the complexity of mathematical work. In an early spread about the French Revolution, McClintock puts imagination, scale, and color to work to show numbers drowning out the sounds of upheaval outside Germain's door; she depicts massive numbers themselves on the streets, numbers that protect the young Germain. Later, McClintock depicts a cloud of equations enveloping Germain at a dinner party, where she is surrounded by party-goers; eager to talk about math, she is brushed off, as that was deemed a subject not suitable for women. McClintock also paints — in an exuberant spread showing the moment that Germain has an epiphany about sound vibrations — Chladni plate patterns bouncing off the cobblestone streets. (On the book's cover, these are replaced by numbers.)

One of the final spreads notes Germain’s historic award from the Royal Academy of Sciences. In the book’s closing illustrator’s note, McClintock writes about choosing to take a nonliteral approach to this moment, since women were not allowed into the Academy if their husbands were not with them. So, McClintock paints Germain standing on the steps of the building with her pen held in the air. Flowing from it, weaving in and out of all the male members of the Academy, is the formula that won her the prize.

In a July visit to my site, McClintock wrote about her decision to rely on visual metaphor: “If I’d used a strictly visual interpretation of the text, the illustrations would have been 32 pages of Sophie sitting at a desk, slowly getting older. Not very exciting, visually.” McClintock also talked about having incorporated into her collage illustrations (in particular, the visually striking spread where we see Germain at her desk submitting her work via mail as "Monsieur LeBlanc") such things as old math books from the time Germain would have been studying, examples of her hand-written notes, old letters and stamps, and more. This is the first time McClintock has used collage illustrations in a picture book.

I love how all of these numbers and equations and symbols spring from Germain's mind, from the streets, from objects, from buildings, and from her very pen. It’s certainly an exciting way to make visible something that is the domain of the interior mind. Will the Caldecott committee also be impressed? If we do the math, as Germain would undoubtedly do, we see that we have 80 days till the ALA Youth Media Awards when we will find out!