Daredevil
The Daring Life of Betty Skelton (With Audio Recording)
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A riveting picture book biography of Betty Skelton, aviation and auto racing pioneer, from award-winning author/illustrator Megan McCarthy. Includes audio!
In the 1930s most girls were happy playing with dolls. But one girl, Betty Skelton, liked playing with airplanes, watching them fly around outside, and even flying airplanes herself! She lived for an adventure—in the air, the water, and on land—and nothing could stop her, especially not being a girl.
When Betty Skelton was young there weren’t many women flying airplanes or racing cars, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. She was always ready to take on a challenge, and she loved to have fun. Beetty rode motorcycles, raced cars, jumped out of planes, and flew jets, helicoptors, gliders, and blimps. And by the time she was an adult, Betty was known in the press as the “First Lady of Firsts!”
This vibrantly illustrated picture book biography with audio reveals the exciting life of a brave pioneer who followed her dreams and showed the world that women can do anything!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCarthy has made a career out of picture-book biographies of unexpected subjects, and this thoroughly inspiring portrait of Betty June Skelton (1926 2011) reveals a woman who embodies a "need for speed." Direct quotations from Skelton fill her story with personality. She was obsessed with flying from an early age, and she made the newspapers for a solo flight on her 16th birthday never mind that her father had already plopped her into a cockpit four years earlier. "It wasn't quite legal then so I couldn't tell anybody," she recalled. Skelton went on to break records on land, sea, and air, and she even had a shot at becoming the first woman in space. In McCarthy's succinct prose and wide-eyed acrylic cartooning, Skelton comes through as a woman eager to break barriers and try anything. Ages 4 8.
