Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark cover art

Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark

By: Allen R. Wells, DeAndra Hodge
Narrated by: Melinda Sewak
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $5.99

Buy Now for $5.99

About this listen

Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark features music and special effects. Listen along and enjoy the fun!


Based on a true story, this inspiring audiobook is about a curious, tinkering girl who grew up to become one of the first Black female engineers for NASA; for fans of Ada Twist, Scientist and Counting on Katherine.

Yvonne Clark had an engineering spark—an instinct for figuring out how things worked.

Broken lamp? She screwed, rewired, and wrenched until…light!
Wrecked radio? She twisted, snipped, and hammered until…music!
Clogged furnace? She picked, plucked, and cleared until…heat!

When she grew up, Yvonne’s problem-solving power took her to NASA, where fellow engineers had a serious problem with the Saturn V rocket’s F-1 engine: It had hot spots—high temperatures in the engine.

Can Yvonne Clark and her engineering spark solve the problem?

In an electric tribute, Allen R. Wells artfully tells the life story of his favorite engineering professor who also happened to be one of our nation’s most influential African American engineers.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Biographies Growing Up & Facts of Life Literature & Fiction Multicultural Stories Science & Technology Women

Critic Reviews

"A buoyant profile of Yvonne Clark (1929-2019), a lifelong tinkerer with a knack for making everything work better, from the family toaster to giant rockets... Inspirational fare for aspiring engineers and scientists." —<i>Kirkus</i>
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.