Mattie and the Machine

"A fictionalized account of Margaret E. Knight's struggle to win legal rights to the invention of the paper-bag machine. Fifteen-year-old Mattie holds a rare position at Columbia Paper: Unlike the other girls and women, she doesn't run machines or hand-fold paper bags. She's a mechanic. In her first job at a cotton mill, she invented a device to keep women from being injured by flying shuttles. When Mattie learns that newly hired Civil War veterans, including Frank, a mechanic she trained, are earning higher salaries simply because they are men, she makes a bet with the factory owner: If she can beat Frank in inventing a paper-bag-folding machine, the women's wages will be raised to equal the men's. She does so, then faces a daunting road to receiving a patent-before learning that someone has stolen her idea. Mattie takes the thief to court and wins, just as she did in real life"--Kirkus Reviews.