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Gr 5-8 A charming and inventive story of a child struggling to find her identity at the turn of the 20th century. As the only girl in an uppercrust Texas family of seven children, Calpurnia, 11, is expected to enter young womanhood with all its trappings of tight corsets, cookery, and handiwork. Unlike other girls her age, Callie is most content when observing and collecting scientific specimens with her grandfather. Bemoaning her lack of formal knowledge, he surreptitiously gives her a copy of "The Origin of Species" and Callie begins her exploration of the...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Eleven-year-old Calpurnia is the middle child (and only girl) of seven siblings. It's summertime, 1889, in Fentress, Texas, and hot enough to fry an egg outside: the local newspaper reports that "the temperature was 106 degrees in the middle of the street." After Callie's letter to the editor is published ("It seemed to me that the temperature in the shade would be a lot more useful to the citizens of our town"), her favorite brother encourages her to spend the summer writing down her scientific ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

In Texas, 1889, eleven-year-old Calpurnia tries to carve a place for herself as a scientist. Trouble is, the only other family member intere...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

In this middle-grade novel, set in rural Texas, Calpurnia Virginia Tate—a.k.a. Callie Vee—studies the world around her and finds more than she expected. Callie and her grandfather investigate the wildlife that surrounds their property, and they stumble upon what they believe is a new species of plant. The wait to have the find verified provides suspense throughout the story, and the discovery itself serves as a metaphor for Callie’s ongoing self-discovery. The more Callie learns to see in ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More