Armed with a toolbox inherited from her father and a lively imagination, young Mattie Knight loved to make things, which she drew in a notebook labeled My Inventions and which her brothers called her brainstorms. Throughout her life these brainstorms served her well—whether making a foot warmer for her mother or toys for her older brothers or, when she was twelve, designing a metal guard to prevent shuttles from shooting off looms and hurting workers. Later Mattie would invent a machine that could cut and glue together a square-bottomed paper bag, though when she applied for a patent, she discovered someone had managed to steal her idea.

Mattie lived during a time when it was believed that women couldn't understand the complexities of mechanical equipment, yet she went to court and won the patent for her paper-bag machine, largely by showing her sketches as evidence that she was its true inventor. Many of the paper bags we use today are still processed using Mattie's invention. Based on the life of the inventor Margaret E. Knight (1838-1914), this introduction to "the Lady Edison" will leave young readers inspired.

From the dust jacket