Goodnight Golda

Author: Batya Bricker
Illustrations: Ilana Stein
Reviewer: Miriam Schiff
This book was written to give girls and young women perspective of all the things they can aspire to be, be it scientist, doctor, politician, teacher, fashionista, freedom fighter, mother, business or a role that hasn't been invented yet.

It features characters from biblical times to today – women who had pluck, who swam against the current, who wanted to save others from suffering or right political wrongs. All these women searched for and found something special only they could give to the world. It wasn’t easy or comfortable or without heartache, but they did it anyway.
The book is laid out with each woman and an illustration on two pages and is written in language that will appeal to preteen children, much like a storyteller would do.
There are chapters on so many strong-willed women. To name a few: Golda Meir, first woman Prime Minister of Israel (hence the title Goodnight Golda); Vera Cooper Rubin, American astrophysicist who discovered dark matter in space; Helen Suzman, the only woman in the South African Parliament fighting for the rights and justice a of all South Africans; Hedy Lamarr,  film star and inventor – eventually known as the Mother of WiFi. Gertrude Elion, Nobel prizewinner for Medicine who started out as a biochemist working in a factory testing the sourness of pickles and went on to develop drugs for leukaemia including one that makes transplant surgery possible today.
Amazing and inspirational and, while all these women were Jewish, their stories are a testament to achievement, no matter where you come from or what your faith.