Book Review: Oh No They Didn’t: Remarkable Women

Oh No They Didn’t: Remarkable Women takes a lighthearted (or you might say silly) approach to learning about female figures from history and mythology. Written by Eric Huang and illustrated by Sam Caldwell, it’s part of a series of books that also includes one about US presidents.

The idea is that it’s debunking misconceptions about women in history and myth, such as that goddesses were always about hearth and home, that women in legends were just ordinary people (not part of the epic story), that smart women were rewarded in their fields and so on.

This presentation got really annoying to me really fast. I’d rather just have the stories presented as stories rather than have the book awkwardly ask questions that no one would answer yes to. Such as “men pioneered all the breakthroughs…didn’t they?” when most kids have heard of female scientists or inventors or “most first ladies of the United States earned post-graduate degrees…didn’t they?” when women rarely received such degrees before the 20th century (the book says five first ladies have post-graduate degrees, but only lists four and I can only find four that have ).

If you can get past the weirdness of the format, there is some good information about historical figures from many occupations and throughout history. There are about 60 real-life women and nine mythological figures included, with women scientists, artists, actors, activists, politicians, writers, rulers and more included.

Lots of these people will be familiar to adult readers, such as Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Indira Gandhi, Jane Goodall, Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce and Amanda Gorman. Some may be more familiar to younger readers such as Jenny Ortega, Jazz Jennings and Millie Bobby Brown. Still others you might be learning about together, like Jennifer Doudna, who helped develop CRISPR gene editing techniques, architect Zaha Hadid, or Iceland’s prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurôardóttir.

The book is generally arranged by subject with each one on a two-page spread. Cartoony illustrations depict the women and illustrations related to them. It’s a quick way to learn about a wide range of women, and you could definitely just skip over the questions with the “oh no she didn’t” answers if they annoy you as much as they do me.

About the book: 64 pages, paperback. Published 2025 by words & pictures. Suggested retail price $12.99.

After sharing some witch themed math activities, I found a bunch more fun printable worksheets with a Halloween theme for kids to try, so let’s take a look at some more low-prep Halloween learning fun.

Give kids practice measuring bats, spiders, ghosts and more with these printables from What I Have Learned Teaching. Kids can use a ruler, unit cubes or even little Halloween themed erasers to measure and track the size of the images.

Practice symmetry by drawing half a haunted house, ghost, skull or other simple images with this activity from Printables Hub.

I always love a good roll and draw activity, too, so check out this roll and draw a ghost activity (which has printable instructions) from Finding Myself Young.

Missy Printable Design has a cute set of Halloween worksheets for preschool, including tracing the letter H and a haunted house, spider counting, number tracing, sequencing, coloring pages and more.

The Halloween themed printables from The Artisan Life are meant to be playdough mats, and you can definitely use them for that to make the shape and trace the letters. But you could also use pipe cleaners or Wikki Stix, or line up buttons or anything else on them.

Older kids will enjoy this witch’s brew logic puzzle from Education.com. The witch has made different potions with different colors that do different things, and using the clues you can figure out which one is which. (Don’t worry; there’s an answer key included if you can’t figure it out on your own!)

Another fun puzzle is this decoder activity from Crafting Cheerfully. The holiday icons each represent a letter, and kids can use the decoder to answer the riddle. This isn’t a free resource (and the link in the post is broken but you can find it here) but it includes 20 riddles and an editable file so you can make up your own codes to decipher.

Have you read?

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