Brave Harriet: The First Woman to Fly the English Channel Book

Book level: 3.6
Lexile: 810
Fountas & Pinnell: P

Book summary: A decade before Amelia Earhart, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. This book is the story of her journey from school teacher to first woman to cross the sea flying from England to France in 1912.

Genre: Biography. Although this book documents only a small portion of Harriet's life (her acquiring a flying license, being a pilot, and flying across the English channel), it includes factual and accurate information about her life during that time period.

Mentor writing trait:
Word Choice. The author's words paint a picture in the reader's mind and she is very intentional in the words she uses, especially the adjectives she uses to describe things. The author describes Harriet's plane as flimsy, spindly, and a rat trap which gives you a certain impression of what that plane looked like and probably flew like. She also describes the mist that Harriet flies through as cold, wet whiteness and beastly cold. Reading those descriptions just made me shiver and think about how miserable that would be to fly through.

Classroom integration/minilessons:
Read this book as a mentor text in word choice- concentrate on the adjectives she uses. Write down some of their favorite adjectives to use as examples when they write. Take a nature walk outside the classroom, have students bring their writing notebooks with them and a pencil. Have students write down notes during this walk asking them to describe what they see, feel, smell, etc. Once back inside the classroom, have the kids write a small narrative about their favorite part of the nature walk, challenge them to use more visual adjectives like the author Marissa did in this book.