The Lab Girl



My first book (released in 2016) is called:

  1. The Lab Girl Summary
  2. The Lab Girl Hair Serum Ingredients
  1. Lab Girl (理系少女, Rikei Shōjo?) is a Module for Hatsune Miku. 1 Description 2 Game appearances 3 Gallery 4 References The Module's attire consists of a white, collared lab coat with red, blue, and green square designs on the bottom left side and a chain that is attached to a small slit. There is also a blue shirt, a red bow tie, a dark blue skirt, black socks, and brown loafers.
  2. In her new book, Lab Girl, she uncovers the secret life of plants. She also writes about the personal side of being a scientist that we don’t usually hear about, from dumpster diving for lab equipment to her Bonnie and Clyde relationship with her lab partner, Bill. Hope Jahren is the author of Lab Girl.
  3. The creative minds behind The Lab Girl & Co are Valentina, a chemical and environmental engineer, who studied in France, and Isabella, who has a B.A in Legal Studies+ International Studies. Both originally from Cali, Colombia and have been best friends since 1998. Two Soul Friends were lucky to find Monica Fonseca in their entrepreneurial journey.

The Lab Girl & Co Natural & Vegan Hair Care Brand by Two Soul Friends w/ @fonsecamonica Why have a love affair when you can have a hair affair?💗 ️📦: USA & COLOMBIA!

LAB GIRL

It’s about work, and love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together.

You can read an excerpt from Chapter 3 here.

Penguin Random House Description: Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Praise:

“A beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.” —Barack Obama, via Facebook

“Lab Girl made me look at trees differently. It compelled me to ponder the astonishing grace and gumption of a seed. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced me to a deeply inspiring woman—a scientist so passionate about her work I felt myself vividly with her on every page. This is a smart, enthralling, and winning debut.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

“Some people are great writers, while other people live lives of adventure and importance. Almost no one does both. Hope Jahren does both. She makes me wish I’d been a scientist.” —Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder

The Lab Girl Summary

Lab Girl surprised, delighted, and moved me. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose. . . . With Lab Girl, Jahren joins those talented scientists who are able to reveal to us the miracle of this world in which we live.” —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

Reviews:

“Engrossing. . . . Thrilling. . . . Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times

“Clear, compelling and uncompromisingly honest . . . Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature

“Spirited. . . . Stunning. . . . Moving.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A powerful new memoir . . . Jahren is a remarkable scientist who turns out to be a remarkable writer as well. . . . Think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks. But Hope Jahren is a woman in science, who speaks plainly to just how rugged that can be. And to the incredible machinery of life around us.” —On Point/NPR

“Brilliant. . . . Extraordinary. . . . Delightfully, wickedly funny. . . . Powerful and disarming.” —The Washington Post

“Lyrical . . . illuminating . . . Offers a lively glimpse into a scientifically inclined mind.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Revelatory. . . . A veritable jungle of ideas and sensations.” —Slate

“Warm, witty . . . Fascinating. . . . Jahren’s singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Deeply affecting. . . . A totally original work, both fierce and uplifting. . . . A belletrist in the mold of Oliver Sacks, she is terrific at showing just how science is done. . . . She’s an acute observer, prickly, and funny as hell.” —Elle

“Magnificent. . . . [A] gorgeous book of life. . . . Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Chicago Tribune

“Mesmerizing. . . . Deft and flecked with humor . . . a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life. . . . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, it delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.” —Seattle Times

“Jahren’s memoir [is] the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A scientific memoir that’s beautifully human.” —Popular Science

“Breathtakingly honest. . . . Gorgeous. . . . At its core, Lab Girl is a book about seeing—with the eyes, but also the hands and the heart.” —American Scientist

Reader Reviews of “Lab Girl” on Goodreads

Accolades:

International Bestseller

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (2016)

Named One of the Best Books of the Year (2016) by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Kirkus reviews.

Named One of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years.

Finalist, PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award (2017)

Finalist, Barnes & Noble Discover Award in Nonfiction (2016)

Longlisted, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction (2016)

Included within the “Big Read” by the National Endowment for the Arts

Lab girl sparknotes

Translations: 23 languages including Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Junior Library Guild Rating:Accelerated Reader (Level 8; Points: 18); Lexile Level 1240L; recommended for grades 11 & up.

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, e-Book and Audiobook (read by the author).

Purchasing Options:

/ Random House / IndieBound / Powells / Barnes & Noble / Amazon.com /

Purpose

To use the book Lab Girl as a starting point for a close look at the life of a scientist and the impact her professional and personal experiences had on her career.

Context

This lesson uses the book Lab Girl, written by Hope Jahren. This book is one of the winners of the 2017 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books. SB&F, Science Books & Films, is a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This book illustrates the development of a female scientist and the links between her development as a person and her growth as a scientist. This book is as much a personal memoir as it is an exploration of Jahren’s passion about science, weaving together stories of her childhood and life as a young scientist with descriptive details about the study of plant life. Jahren is now a renowned geobiologist, but she chose to begin her story with vivid recollections of the many nights and weekends spent in her father’s lab, and how these early experiences inspired an interest in plants and scientific inquiry.

The book is separated into three sections, and each one uses plants, trees, and flowers as metaphors for Jahren’s personal story. Through this unique style of storytelling, Jahren discusses her interests, her studies as an undergraduate and graduate student in science, the growth of a friendship, a romantic relationship, her marriage and family life, her emotional struggles, and the nature of her field of scientific study.

Themes that resonate throughout the book revolve largely around being a woman in a male-dominated field, and the emotions and passions surrounding her love of plants and its role in her life. Jahren used science and plants as a refuge and safe space to explore, and her work became a reliable constant in her life. The richness of the book lends itself to classroom discussions on a range of topics, from the science discussed in the book, to the complex issues of women in science, to mental health and emotional development.

In this lesson, students will focus on how Jahren used plants to tell her story. To encourage students to become engaged, they will complete a reading log, taking note of various themes throughout the book. Then they will complete a project, focusing on either the author’s writing style or the science discussed in the book. As an extension, they can research historical female figures in science, comparing their experiences to those of the author and protagonist of Lab Girl, Hope Jahren.

Ideas in this lesson are also related to concepts found in these Common Core State Standards:

  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to important distinctions the author makes and to any gaps or inconsistencies in the account.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; summarize complex concepts, processes, or information presented in a text by paraphrasing them in simpler but still accurate terms.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.6 Analyze the author’s purpose in providing an explanation, describing a procedure, or discussing an experiment in a text, identifying important issues that remain unresolved.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., quantitative data, video, multimedia) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.9 Synthesize information from a range of sources (e.g., texts, experiments, simulations) into a coherent understanding of a process, phenomenon, or concept, resolving conflicting information when possible.

Planning Ahead

Read Lab Girl and the Lab Girl Reading Log before moving forward with this lesson. As you read, note passages throughout the book that students might reference in their logs. Review the discussion questions and project options. Additional information is provided on the Lab Girl teacher sheet.

One of the videos the students will be asked to watch during the motivation will require Flash to be enabled in the browser they use.

Since this lesson uses the Lab Girl book, you should try to have classroom copies of the book on hand.

Motivation

To begin this lesson, students should use their Lab Girl student esheet to view some videos about plants and the author of Lab Girl, Hope Jahren. [The first video requires using a browser with Flash enabled.] They will be guided through a series of videos and asked to consider questions with a partner. As you listen to the different conversations students are having, encourage students to explain their answers. After students discuss the videos in pairs, you may have a class discussion regarding these summary questions:

  • Why is the study of plants important?
  • How do our personal histories influence our careers?
  • What questions do you have prior to reading Lab Girl?

Ask students to use this last question to write a short paragraph expressing what they expect to learn through their reading of Lab Girl.

Development

Students should read Lab Girl and complete a project to help them further engage with the topics of the book. As they read the book, students should complete the Lab Girl Reading Log, which should be collected by you and graded.

The reading log for this lesson is a variation of a double-entry note log. Using the log, students should select passages to highlight that strike them as significant. The reading log provided contains guiding statements called Idea Strands, but you can choose to focus student reading on topics that relate to science learning goals that are being explored in the classroom.

Some additional questions students may want to explore as they read the book include:

  • What are some of the many challenges scientists face? Students can consider botched experiments, the lack of meaningful results, and funding issues.
  • What kinds of contributions do Jahren's findings make to science and society as a whole?
  • How do you think Jahren's father's job as a scientist and her mother's background in literature contribute to her unique perspective?

After students have finished reading the book and filled out the reading log, provide them with the Lab Girl Project Instructions student sheet, which provides direction for completing one of these activities:

  • Narrate the Life of a Plant
  • Interview a Female Scientist
  • Analyze a Plant Allegory
  • Research a Scientific Method
Because the students have several project options to choose from, you may wish to make a rubric for each project that students can use to guide their work. There are several resources on the Internet that describe the use of rubrics in the K-12 classroom. Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything: Assessment and Rubrics is a useful guide in developing rubrics. Teachnology.com contains a Teacher Rubric Maker that provides a tool to design and print rubrics from your computer.

Assessment

To assess student understanding, you should collect and grade the reading logs and the projects students have completed.

For the reading logs, make sure that students have identified an idea strand and have related it to information found in the chapter. Satisfactory student work will have succinct notes on chapters within the sections and show how each chapter is related to at least one idea strand. Exemplary student work will relate multiple idea strands to each section and make connections from one section to the next.

For the projects, you can make use of the rubrics you created for them and use those to assess students' work.

Extensions

Historically, many women in science were not given the credit they deserved. As an extension for this lesson, students can choose a female scientist in history and create a PowerPoint presentation describing that scientist’s life, career, and contribution to science. They can watch this short clip on women in science to get some ideas about female scientists to investigate. They may also choose a more modern female scientist. To add to this extension, you may want to have students compare the career trajectory of a female scientist from the early or mid-1900s to a more modern scientist and to describe how it has gotten easier for female scientists and how their path has not changed that much. Students may want to consider how intersectionality plays into this discussion and whether all female scientists' lives have improved in the same ways.

The Lab Girl Hair Serum Ingredients

You can use these Science NetLInks lessons to help extend the ideas in this lesson:

  • The Wild Trees lesson uses a book to explore the giant redwood trees of the redwood forests.
  • Grassland Plants: Plant Identification offers a guide on how to use plant structures to identify plants.
Funder Info

Science NetLinks is proud to have Subaru as a funder of this project.