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I noticed that my nieces' library had a serious lack of biographies, so I decided to remedy that situation, and I started, actually, with Amelia Earhart.
Actually, that was a little disappointing. What I found on her looked very... done. Like everybody expected children to read biographies on famous Americans, and she's a famous American (and a woman, so double points there!) and they just churned out the same old stuff, year after year.
Not very inspiring, but I figured I'd grit my teeth and look harder... and I found a few books on Bessie Coleman instead!
Who's Bessie Coleman?
Well, let's put it this way. She was the first African-American period to have a pilot's license, and the first American of any race or gender to have an international pilot's license. She had to go to Paris to learn to fly because over in the US the flight schools wouldn't take black women as students and the black aviators wouldn't train women at all.
And she did this two years before Earhart started flying, too. (Died sooner as well, but at least everybody knew how she died.)
So I decided to get one of two books about Bessie Coleman. I could get one that appears to be based upon eulogies, or I could get one that more specifically focuses on her life, Nobody Owns the Sky.
And I did. GOD, what a mistake that turned out to be! Being the daughter of a famous aviator apparently does not make you qualified to write about... well, anything.
Here's a sample page:
Bessie's life was not long, but she flew far and wide
In Chicago she showed off a Richthofen Glide
Her air shows in Boston left crowds starry-eyed;
But in Jacksonville, Florida, everyone cried
Because Bessie's plane failed, and she fell, and she died
"Farewell to Brave Bessie", they sighed
It goes on like that for the entire book... though it also has a random little poem-let (in the same style) that just generally talks about how Flying is Great, sorta at the start and sorta at the end of the book.
I don't know if I'm keeping this one. Bessie Coleman. Great woman. Deserves to be better known, and really deserves to be one of the standards of the Woman's History Month and the Black History Month line-up. (Admittedly, teaching history properly instead of resorting to themed months would be better still, but let's not talk crazy talk now.)
She really didn't deserve to have a book written by a monkey with a typewriter.
Actually, that was a little disappointing. What I found on her looked very... done. Like everybody expected children to read biographies on famous Americans, and she's a famous American (and a woman, so double points there!) and they just churned out the same old stuff, year after year.
Not very inspiring, but I figured I'd grit my teeth and look harder... and I found a few books on Bessie Coleman instead!
Who's Bessie Coleman?
Well, let's put it this way. She was the first African-American period to have a pilot's license, and the first American of any race or gender to have an international pilot's license. She had to go to Paris to learn to fly because over in the US the flight schools wouldn't take black women as students and the black aviators wouldn't train women at all.
And she did this two years before Earhart started flying, too. (Died sooner as well, but at least everybody knew how she died.)
So I decided to get one of two books about Bessie Coleman. I could get one that appears to be based upon eulogies, or I could get one that more specifically focuses on her life, Nobody Owns the Sky.
And I did. GOD, what a mistake that turned out to be! Being the daughter of a famous aviator apparently does not make you qualified to write about... well, anything.
Here's a sample page:
Bessie's life was not long, but she flew far and wide
In Chicago she showed off a Richthofen Glide
Her air shows in Boston left crowds starry-eyed;
But in Jacksonville, Florida, everyone cried
Because Bessie's plane failed, and she fell, and she died
"Farewell to Brave Bessie", they sighed
It goes on like that for the entire book... though it also has a random little poem-let (in the same style) that just generally talks about how Flying is Great, sorta at the start and sorta at the end of the book.
I don't know if I'm keeping this one. Bessie Coleman. Great woman. Deserves to be better known, and really deserves to be one of the standards of the Woman's History Month and the Black History Month line-up. (Admittedly, teaching history properly instead of resorting to themed months would be better still, but let's not talk crazy talk now.)
She really didn't deserve to have a book written by a monkey with a typewriter.
