Breaking Through the Clouds

Writer Sandra Nickel and illustrator Helena Perez Garcia’s Breaking Through the Clouds is an inspiring picture book biography about the meteorologist whose discoveries helped us understand how weather works. When Joanne Simpson (1923–2010) was a girl, she sailed her boat beneath the puffy white clouds of Cape Cod. 

As a pilot, she flew her plane so high, its wings almost touched them. And when World War II began and Joanne moved to the University of Chicago, a professor asked her to teach Air Force officers about those very clouds and the weather-changing winds. As soon as the war ended, Joanne decided to seriously study the clouds she had grown to love so much. Her professors laughed. They told her to go home. They told her she was no longer needed. They told her, “No woman ever got a doctorate in meteorology. And no woman ever will.”