06/08/2026
Wow! We love to see a book by Marquette’s own Carrie Pearson get national attention!
A Mighty Girl's Pick of the Day is in honor of Dr. Virginia Apgar's birthday: "Virginia Wouldn't Slow Down!" by Carrie Pearson. The Apgar Score is known the world over: a test given to babies to determine their health moments after they are born. Less well-known is the story of the brilliant, pioneering woman who invented it, even though she named it after herself!
Virginia "Ginny" Apgar was born into a New Jersey household so brimming with curiosity and motion that, as she later put it, no one ever sat down. Ginny was no different -- talking her way onto every sports team, building her own violins, and leaving teachers to wonder, as one famously did, "frankly, how does she do it?" She earned her medical degree at Columbia in 1933 and, when her mentor warned that surgery offered few opportunities for women, pivoted into the new field of anesthesiology, where she became only the second woman in the country to earn full board certification. In 1952, in answer to a medical student's question about how to tell a healthy newborn from one in distress, she jotted down a five-point checklist for evaluating a baby in the first minute of life. That checklist became the Apgar Score, used in delivery rooms around the world ever since and credited with saving countless babies' lives.
This lively picture book biography moves at Ginny's own brisk pace, capturing the irrepressible energy that defined her. Nancy Carpenter's warm, vibrantly observed illustrations follow her from a busy childhood through medical school and into the delivery rooms of New York's Presbyterian Hospital, where she would help bring some twenty thousand babies into the world. Substantial back matter, including a timeline, an author's note, and additional historical context, helps young readers understand both the medical breakthrough at the story's heart and the wider barriers women in science faced in Apgar's lifetime. Highly recommended for ages 5 to 9.
"Virginia Wouldn't Slow Down!" is available at https://www.amightygirl.com/virginia-wouldn-t-slow-down
To share her story with young readers, there is an early chapter-book biography, "She Persisted: Virginia Apgar" for ages 6 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/she-persisted-virginia-apgar
Virginia Apgar's story is also told in the picture book "She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/she-persisted), "Girls Think of Everything" for ages 8 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/girls-think-of-everything), and "Trailblazers: 33 Women in Science Who Changed the World" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/trailblazers-33-women-in-science)
For teens and adults, she's also featured in the books "Bold Women of Medicine" (https://www.amightygirl.com/bold-women-of-medicine) and "Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science – And The World" (https://www.amightygirl.com/headstrong-52-women)
For children's books about more trailblazing women of science, visit our blog post "60 Books to Inspire Science-Loving Mighty Girls," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=13914
