Nobody Owns the Sky: The Story of Brave Bessie Coleman - Hardcover

Reeve Lindbergh, daughter of aviator Charles Lindbergh and poet Anne Morrow Lindbergh, first learned about Bessie Coleman in 1986, the 60th anniversary of her father's famous flight. "Bessie was an incredibly brave person who was hardly noticed, while my parents got so much publicity it was difficult for them to live their normal lives. I saw a crazy imbalance and wanted to try to set things right." Reeve Lindbergh lives in Vermont.

Pamela Paparone observes that NOBODY OWNS THE SKY is "about making dreams come true. My own dream has always been to be a children's book illustrator. In fact, I was ten years old when I created my first children's book. I dedicated it to Johnny Cash." Pamela Paparone lives in Pennsylvania.

Grade 1-4-This narrative poem using simple rhymes tells Bessie Coleman's life story and creates a cadence of bold rhythms that young children will want to hear again and again. Paparone's superb folk-art illustrations, rendered in brilliantly colorful acrylic paintings, provide accurate visual details of the Texas cotton fields of Bessie's childhood, Chicago's vibrant African-American community during World War I, and Paris in the 1920s. Perspective is perfectly realized in the end papers, which give bird's-eye views reflecting the world Bessie must have seen in her first courageous flights. There are jewels of subtlety in Paparone's illustrations, too. In one early scene from Bessie's Texas school years, readers spy students' artwork on a bulletin board. There among the horses and houses that other children drew is Bessie's picture of white clouds against a blue, blue sky. She had already imagined her future, "flying free, flying true." This appealing story is all about having and realizing dreams. Even though Bessie Coleman died tragically young, Nobody Owns the Sky is very much a celebration of life as well as a tribute to a young woman who dared to dream big. It is a splendid picture-book biography of the first order.
Jerry D. Flack, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.