Women aviators hold a significant place aviation history and are important in the broader narrative of women’s history. To celebrate Amelia Earhart’s July 24 birthday, this month’s book list features women who challenged traditional gender roles and demonstrated that courage, skill, and determination know no gender boundaries.
By Nancy Roe Pimm. Illustrated by Alexandra Bye.
Shaesta Waiz, a refugee from Afghanistan, dreamed of doing great things. But first she had to leave a refugee camp with her family to make a new life in America, overcome gender stereotypes, be the first in her family to go to college, and overcome her fear of flying. After becoming a pilot, Shaesta made the flight of a lifetime by crossing five continents, making thirty stops in twenty-two countries across nearly 25,000 nautical miles. At the age of thirty, Shaesta was the youngest woman and the first from Afghanistan to circumnavigate the globe by herself in a single-engine aircraft.
Readers ages 4-8
By James Buckley, Jr. Illustrated by Kelly Tindall
This graphic biography tells Earhart's story, from childhood dreams of adventure to her mysterious final flight. For readers ages 8 - 13
by Karen Bush Gibson
A carefully curated collection celebrating the groundbreaking achievements of 26 extraordinary aviators. Gibson celebrates not only the well-known figures like Amelia Earhart but also shines a spotlight on lesser-known trailblazers who have made significant, albeit often under-recognized, contributions to aviation.
By Keith O'Brien.
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
By Loren Grush.
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. Eventually, though, NASA opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender and in 1978, six women were selected from a candidate pool of 8,000.
Meet The Six - brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic—and sometimes deeply sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit.
By Col. Eileen Collins and Jonathan Ward.
Eileen Collins was an aviation pioneer her entire career, from her crowning achievements as the first woman to command an American space mission as well as the first to pilot the space shuttle to her early years as one of the Air Force’s first female pilots. She was in the first class of women to earn pilot’s wings at Vance Air Force Base and was their first female instructor pilot. She was only the second woman admitted to the Air Force’s elite Test Pilot Program at Edwards Air Force Base.
It is a story not only of achievement and overcoming obstacles but of profound personal transformation. The shy, quiet child of an alcoholic father and struggling single mother, who grew up in modest circumstances and was an unremarkable student, she had few prospects when she graduated from high school, but she changed her life to pursue her secret dream of becoming an astronaut. She shares her leadership and life lessons throughout the book with the aim of inspiring and passing on her legacy to a new generation.
