Reviews for Brave Harriet: The First Woman to Fly the English Channel

The average rating for Brave Harriet: The First Woman to Fly the English Channel based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-14 00:00:00 Stephen Oneil This was another great book on Harriet Quimby, though this one is far more concentrated on the crossing of the English Channel. You might compare it with Robert Burleigh's Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic concerning Amelia Earhart Atlantic crossing or Flight concerning Charles Lindbergh's Atlantic crossing or Don Brown's Ruth Law Thrills a Nation concerning that aviator's travels from Chicago to New York. They are all excellent stories. I really liked the illustrations in this one. Since there are so many books about famous aviators, this might lend well to a unit on the topic.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-26 00:00:00 Stacey Richey 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.