The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed

One of my many plans for school this year with the kids includes teaching them about some real-life heroes and heroines from history. Particularly with Clarissa, I'd like to point out how many female heroines begin to emerge in a world that had hitherto been a man's world. We have already explored such characters as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Clara Barton. Some others we plan to discuss are: Florence Nightingale, Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank, and Rosa Parks. In thinking about women heroines, I have also enjoyed reading fiction novels with female main characters. I just finished a wonderful book called The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed about a teenaged girl who accompanies her father on a whaling expedition in the 1850's. Due to the recent death of her mother, Patience and her little brother find themselves torn away from Nantucket Island and all they hold dear as they follow their father out to see. Patience has many qualities, but patience is not one of them. She is a spirited, intelligent, strong-willed girl in a man's world. This tells of her struggle to find love and family amongst hardened sailors while practicing her mathematical skills of navigation. As I read more books about adventures at sea, I find them fascinating. I am really looking forward to our upcoming family vacation to Nantucket and Boston, but hope that we will meet with less adventure than Patience did in this book as grappling with pirates and being tossed about in a Cape Horn storm is not my idea of fun.