Accurate, deeply engrossing, and well-documented.
“Women are lacking in certain qualities that men possess,” an Oklahoma airline executive announced in the summer of 1929, as he demanded that female aviators give up flying.
Female aviators faced enormous odds in the early years of aviation. Determined to compete on an equal footing against men, they met resistance at every turn. Yet female fliers such as Louise McPhetridge Thaden, Ruth Nichols, Amelia Earhart, Florence Klingensmith, and Ruth Elder continued to compete, although they, like male fliers, often died trying. This group biography of these brave fliers also includes the stories of a few other young women whose tales—and lives, like Klingensmith’s, were cut short by airplane crashes. By following the women as a group, chronologically, rather than separating the biographies out individually, O’Brien also provides a fascinating look at the evolution of aviation—surely pushed forward through the groundbreaking efforts of women, as well as men. This effort thrillingly celebrates the giant steps forward that female aviators made for women’s equality in the years just after suffrage was achieved. In 1936, Louise Thaden and her co-pilot, Blanche Noyes, won the prestigious (and lucrative) Bendix Trophy for their coast-to-coast flight, beating out a highly qualified field of men and other women, gratifyingly defying most men’s expectations. The story begins in 1926, the year of Bessie Coleman’s death; its focus on these five white women elides the additional challenges faced by woman aviators of color.
Accurate, deeply engrossing, and well-documented. (Nonfiction. 11-18)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-61842-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
A unique format for a memoir—Lowry (Stay!, 1997, etc.) offers up quotes from her books, dates, black-and-white photographs, and recollections of each shot, as well as the other memories surrounding it. The technique is charming and often absorbing; readers meet Lowry's grandparents, parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren in a manner that suggests thumbing through a photo album with her. The tone is friendly, intimate, and melancholy, because living comes with sorrow: her sister died of cancer at age 28, and Lowry's son, a pilot, died when his plane crashed. Her overall message is taken from the last words that son, Grey, radioed: "You're on your own." The format of this volume is accessible and it reflects the way events are remembered—one idea leading to another, one memory jostling another; unlike conventional autobiographies, however, it will leave readers with unanswered questions: Who was her first husband—and father of her children? Why are her surviving children hardly mentioned? Why does it end—but for one entry—in 1995? It's still an original presentation, one to be appreciated on its own merits.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-89543-X
Page Count: 189
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
In the same format as his Newbery Honor title The Great Fire (1995), Murphy brings the blizzard of 1888 to life. He shows how military weather-monitoring practices, housing and employment conditions, and politics regarding waste management, transportation monopolies, and utilities regulation, all contributed to—and were subsequently affected by—the disaster. He does so through an appealing narrative, making use of first-hand accounts whose sources he describes in his notes at the end (though, disappointingly he cites nothing directly in the text). The wealth of quotable material made available through the letters of members of “the Society of Blizzard Men and Blizzard Ladies” and other sources help to make the story vivid. Many drawings and photographs (some of the blizzard, but most of related scenes) illustrate the text. These large reproductions are all in a sepia-tone that matches the color of the typeface—an effect that feels over-the-top, but doesn’t detract significantly from the power of the story. Murphy’s ability to pull in details that lend context allows him to tell this story of a place in time through the lens of a single, dramatic episode that will engage readers. This is skillfully done: humorous, jaw-dropping, thought-provoking, and chilling. (index) (Nonfiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-590-67309-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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