Early on in his presentation to students at Rossland Summit School, author Jordan Stratford drops the f bomb.
“You’re all feminists,” he tells them, after they all agree that they think boys and girls are all human beings and can learn the same things.
Stratford is the author of the The Wollstoncraft Detective Agency series, and the first book of the series, The Case of the Missing Moonstone has earned him a nomination for this year’s Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. He paid a visit to students from RSS as part of BC Book Prizes On Tour on Friday.
The stop was the 23rd on the tour and Stratford estimates he read to about 2000 children and drove 3500 km. He also took six flights.
“I’m just dropping f bombs all over the coast is what I’m doing,” he jokes.
He used the last of his voice to deliver one last reading to his Rossland audience.
The Wollstoncraft Detective Agency series follows the adventures of Lady Ada Byron and Mary Godwin, two real life women: one credited as the world’s first computer programmer and the other as the inventor of science fiction. While the women were actually born 18 years apart, Stratford introduces the anachronism that the girls are only three years apart in age, adjusting Mary’s age to fit within Ada’s timeline.
“I had to sort of move the timelines around a bit,” said Stratford. “So Mary, and Peebs, and Jane, [Mary’s] sister, have one continuity that’s super imposed over the main continuity of people like Ada and Charles.”
Stratford was inspired to write the series by Mary Wollstoncraft, Mary Godwin’s mother and Britain’s first feminist. He also wanted his own daughter to have real life female role models in STEM.
With BC Book Prizes On Tour, Stratford has also had the chance to share his strong feminist characters with kids across BC.