Jessica Watson: Brave Girl

Today's the 24th birthday of kickass adventurer Jessica Watson.

Seven years (and three days) ago, on May 15, 2010, 16-year-old Jessica Watson became the youngest person to complete a solo trip around the world. It was the completion a dream she had when she was 12, inspired by a a book her mother had read to her and her siblings.

What kind of bravery is needed to head out onto the ocean alone at the age of 16, knowing if you're successful you'll be spending eight months completely alone? Whatever it is, it's clear Jessica Watson had plenty of it.

During her adventurous voyage, she was responsible for repairing damage to her boat, navigating around or through storms, and keeping herself motivated to continue. While sea, she blogged about her experiences.

These days, she still sails quite a bit, when she can find time in her busy schedule. More often, though, she travels around the world by airplane, serving as a Youth Ambassador for The United Nations World Food Programme.

She's written about her experience in her book True Spirit

You can read more about her historic voyage as well as what she's working on now on her blog

You can read about her work with the UN's World Food Programme

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Ruby Bridges: History Maker

Ruby Bridges
by Madeline Donaldson

Everyday first-grader Ruby Bridges was escorted to school by US Marshals. As the first African American student to integrate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans, Louisiana, she needed their protection from the angry mob of white segregationists who harassed her and other students outside the school.

Ruby Bridges (Amazon / Library) earns the Self-Rescuing Princess Society seal of approval for telling the story of a brave child caught up in this significant moment in history, as well as showing how, as an adult, Ruby Bridges uses her experiences to improve the lives of children today. It is filled with information and honestly addresses the difficult issue of racial segregation in a way that is age-appropriate, making it an excellent book for middle grade readers.

[Note: I have included Amazon Affiliate links in this post. I am exploring options for increasing my income from this blog to help me to continue to bring you the important stories of kickass women and girls. While I will always work to tell these stories, I have bills to pay. By all means feel free to look for these books elsewhere if you prefer. If you want to help support the work I do here, please consider using these links to shop.]

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Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald

Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald
by Roxane Orgill, illustrated by Sean Qualls

Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald (Amazon / Library) tells the story of her life from childhood to the beginning of her remarkable career.

Roxane Orgill's love of music is evident in her lyrical prose, as she shows us the life of one of music's greatest performers who grew up dancing for change on the streets of Yonkers showing off steps she learned by taking the train up to Harlem to watch the dancers in the Cotton Club.

It also tells of the extreme hardships she endured as a child living in abject poverty being raised by an uncaring aunt. It doesn't gloss over the danger she was in, nor does it shy away from talking about how Ella was sent to a reform school. Instead, it shows a tenacious young woman who refused to be held back. Eventually she earned herself a spot on the stage at the Apollo's amateur hour dressed in hand-me-down rags and old work boots. And after a moment of paralyzing fear, she began to sing. And that's pretty much all it took. She won the top prize, found herself taken in by experienced performers, and she was on her way.

Sean Qualls' artwork is full of energy, and perfectly captures the era's jazzy style Ella came to embody. Bright, bold colors make each image a visual treat to look at while bringing the story to life on the page.

Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald (Amazon / Library) is ultimately an inspirational book, showing Ella's determination to find a way into the life she wanted. Each stage in her early life is broken into its own chapter, making it a good book for beginning readers.

[Note: I have included Amazon Affiliate links in this post. I am exploring options for increasing my income from this blog to help me to continue to bring you the important stories of kickass women and girls. While I will always work to tell these stories, I have bills to pay. By all means feel free to look for these books elsewhere if you prefer. If you want to help support the work I do here, please consider using these links to shop.]

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Bessie, Queen of the Sky

Bessie, Queen of the Sky
by Andrea Doshi and Jimena Durán, illustrated by Chiara Fabbri

Earlier this week I received a review copy of Bessie, Queen of the Sky, and it's absolutely beautiful. You might remember this book from a post earlier this month recommending their Kickstarter. It was wildly successful, and since it closed they've continued to get requests to buy a copy of their first book, Bessie, Queen of the Sky. So much so they've opened a special Indiegogo campaign just to let people pre-order the book.

Bessie, Queen of the Sky is a delightfully charming picture book re-imagining the life of Bessie Coleman in the form of a fairy tale, making it an excellent book for a bedtime story for young adventurers. The illustrations by Chiara Fabbri are full of movement and life, perfect for setting young imaginations soaring as they drift off to sleep.

The story starts with Bessie as a young girl in Cottonland (Texas) dreaming of flying, and takes a gentle path through her life as she travels to Spark City (Chicago) working toward her goal, and celebrating her trip to the City of Lights (Paris) looking for new and exciting adventures, all while accompanied by her flying companion Bloony.

Its prose captures Bessie Coleman's remarkable drive and determination to make it an inspirational book for any age, while being simple enough for even the youngest dreamers to understand. The authors take some liberties with the historical accuracy, but just to make it less complicated and easier for younger children to relate to Bessie's life.

Bessie, Queen of the Sky (Indiegogo) earns the Self-Rescuing Princess Society seal of approval for its creativity and elegant simplicity in making the story of this brave adventurer more accessible for very young children. In this book they'll learn about the importance of having big dreams, the hard work needed to achieve them, and the satisfaction (and thrill!) of success.

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Talkin' About Bessie

Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman
by Nikki Grimes; illustrated by E.B. Lewis

Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Amazon / Library) is an absolutely beautiful telling of the life and adventures of the amazing Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman. Nikki Grimes, award-winning author (she just won the 2017 Wilder Award!), brings us into Bessie's world through the voices of the people who knew her best. Each page features a portion of her life story as though a member of her family or a close friend was talking to us about what inspired them most about her.

Each tale is exquisitely illuminated with a painting by E.B. Lewis, who magically creates images the reader can practically step into and experience for herself.

Her sister, Elois Coleman tells about the time Bessie decided to move from rural Texas to Chicago to find the thing she knew was waiting for her, even if she didn't quite know what it was yet.

By twenty-three, she'd discovered a newspaper from Chicago
which boasted of a better life up North
and featured stories of powerful women of the Race:
writers, business tycoons, and civil rights workers
like Ida B. Wells, Madame C.J. Walker, Mary Church Terrell—
full-of-hope and headstrong women. Like Bessie.

Her brother John Coleman talks about her time in Chicago and the day her mind caught hold of the dream of flying, and she then and there set her mind to learn how though there weren't any black pilots anywhere, and no flight schools in the US would accept a black woman.

That's when I knew: by whatever miracle
was required, Bessie would learn to fly.

Robert Abbott, editor of The Chicago Defender, the leading newspaper for the African American community, saw the remarkable potential in Bessie, and funded her trip to France to take flying lessons and return to Chicago as the first black woman anywhere to earn a pilot's license.

Bessie's copper color gave the truth of her away.
For, at the core, she—though slight in appearance—
was tough as any metal, and always ready and willing
to test her strength.

And finally we hear from Bessie herself, as she talks about the pure happiness she found in the air.

But flying at Checkerboard Field in Chicago was the best.
My family and friends were there in the stands,
cheering me on as I sliced through the air.
Oh Mama! I wish you could've been in that plane
to feel that magnificent machine shudder
with the sheer joy of leaving the ground.

Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Amazon / Library) wins the Self-Rescuing Princess Society seal of approval for sharing both the struggles and determination that led Bessie Coleman to France, as well as her thrill of success and her drive to share her love of flying with the rest of her race -- lifting them up in more ways than one.

It is a perfect book for early readers though middle-grade children, and its illustrations make it appealing to younger kids as well. Heck, it's so gorgeous, it would make a lovely coffee table book for adults. The story doesn't shy away from the painful truths of Jim Crow and being a black child growing up in the land of cotton in the early 1900s. Instead Nikki Grimes explains these hardships in a way that even young children can understand and process. There's a reason this book has received the Coretta Scott King Award twice -- one for the author, and another for the illustrator. It is a breathtaking book about a truly inspirational woman.

[Note: I have included Amazon Affiliate links in this post. I am exploring options for increasing my income from this blog to help me to continue to bring you the important stories of kickass women and girls. While I will always work to tell these stories, I have bills to pay. By all means feel free to look for these books elsewhere if you prefer. If you want to help support the work I do here, please consider using these links to shop.]

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Malka Zdrojewicz and Individual Acts of Resistance

I've been thinking a lot lately about individual stories that make up historic events. When we learn about these large uprisings or demonstrations, we often only learn about the collective story, without really understanding that its power comes from the synthesis of these thousands of smaller stories. While reading about Claudette Colvin and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I learned about the different ways individuals participated, each to the extent that they could. Most people walked miles each way to work or school in all kinds of weather. Some banded together to form a community carpool. And still others donated money, food, or childcare to help their neighbors who were busy walking or driving rather than riding the bus.

This morning, I learned that today is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (1943). I know a little about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a historic even, but I wanted to know about the individuals and how they participated. In my research, I found this photo. At first glance, I was emotionally struck by how defiant these women appear, even as they are also obviously terrified. I wanted to know: Who were they and what was happening?

From left to right, they are: sisters Rachela and Bluma Wyszogrodzki, and Malka Zdrojewicz. This photo was taken by the SS, as these three were arrested for having carried arms (guns and grenades, etc.) into the ghetto. After the war, Malka talked of her experience in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the circumstances behind this photo.

"We went to a neutral place in the ghetto area and climbed down into the underground sewers. Through them, we girls used to carry arms into the ghetto; we hid them in our boots. During the ghetto uprising, we hurled Molotov cocktails at the Germans.

"After the suppression of the uprising, we went into hiding, taking refuge in an underground shelter where a large quantity of arms was piled up. But the Germans detected us and forced us out. I happened to be there with Rachela and Bluma Wyszogrodzka (and that is how they took our picture) ...

"Rachela and I, together with the others, were driven to the Umschlagplatz. They later took us to Majdanek from there."
(source: Institute for Historical Review)

They had good reason to be terrified. By 1943, Jews throughout Europe were well aware of the incredible danger they faced. Everyone in the Warsaw Ghetto had been forcibly moved there -- often after they'd already escaped the Nazis as they passed through rural villages in eastern Poland on their way to the Russian front -- and they knew that it was only a temporary arrangement as the Nazis figured out what to do with them. They'd already seen large groups of their friends and family members taken away to Treblinka and Majdanek, two of the Nazi German Extermination camps in Poland.

When faced with such abject oppression and terror, these three young women (and countless others like them) refused to give up. They found ways to resist even amid the most horrific circumstances.

FYI: Malka was the only one of the three to survive Majdanek.

---

Image source: Wikipedia. Image info: Stroop Report original caption: "HeHalutz women captured with weapons." Jewish resistance women, among them Malka Zdrojewicz (right), who survived the Majdanek extermination camp.

You can read more about the women in the Warsaw Ghetto in this excellent World History Connected post.

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SRPS Shout-Out: Alex Heberling - author and artist of The Hues

Last week I raved about The Hues in my Kickstart This post. I'm totally in love with this project and managed to get in touch with Alex Heberling, the fantastic author and artist responsible for my latest and newest comic obsession and talk with her about her love of magical girls and the importance of supporting diversity in comics.



What is it about magical girls that attracts you? Why create your own?

Sailor Moon was my introduction to magical girls, so it's really my biggest influence in that regard. SM was like an even awesomer Power Rangers that was ALL girls! So I was smitten from the very beginning. That, and color-coded characters are a particular weakness of mine.



I've seen a couple of quotes by you about your choice in characters and your reasons for making them so diverse (body size, color, gender expression, etc.). Would you care to elaborate on that a bit?

I've learned a lot about representation, and the ridiculous lack thereof, over the last several years, and when I decided to resurrect The Hues, which was something I first concieved nearly two decades ago, I knew that more diversity was one way to make this magical girl story fresh-- tell a story with the kinds of girls that mainstream media never gives the time of day. I'll admit that The Hues spent a long part of its' existence as a pretty boring and derivative story, full of white people with a sprinkling of token non-white characters that weren't really given any thought or care. So the first thing I did was "recast" my main lineup of girls, and put in a mix of ethnicities, backgrounds, body types, and so on.



Are these characters based on people you know? Friends or a composite of people? Or are they mean to represent a wider range of character than we typically get?

Yes and no, and all of the above! I think a lot of writers draw from the people around them when writing characters, and there are specific traits that I pull from myself and the people around me. Lauren, for instance, is the type of brash, badass gothy girl that I might've idolized in high school. It's all part of the fun of getting to explore characters. And part of the challenge is writing the things that are NOT like me, as well, and putting myself in someone else's shoes.



What makes these young women especially "kick ass?"

They are perfect and beautiful cinnamon rolls. But then, I'm rather biased in their favor. ;) I think they kick ass because they don't back down from challenges, they support and help each other and everyone around them, and they never give up.



If you haven't already done so, please go check out her blog, and then her Kickstarter page and consider backing her! We desperately need more of these kinds of stories about diverse and kick ass young women!

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