Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday 3.16.16 Strong, American Women

Every Wednesday I join Alyson Beecher from kidlitfrenzy and other

kidlit bloggers to share wonderful nonfiction picture books.

The intention of today's blog is to give educational professionals

new nonfiction reading material and ideas to use 

with students to promote a love of reading nonfiction materials.

It seems that publishers were trying to get books out about strong women in time for March's Women's History Month!  During the past few weeks, I read some great picture book biographies about strong, American woman.  
As I read these books, I noticed they could be used for a variety of purposes.  Check out these books and then see how you can use them as mentor texts or to talk about the person through character traits and theme purposes.


Miss Mary Reporting
written by Sue Macy
illustrated by C.F. Payne
published by Simon and Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
I wrote more about this book here.


Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea 
written by Robert Burleigh
illustrated by Raul Colon
published by Simon and Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books


Fearless Flyer
written by Heather Lang
illustrated by Raul Colon
published by Calkins Creek, an imprint of Highlights


Dorothea's Eyes
written by Barb Rosenstock
illustrated by Gerard DuBois
published by Calkins Creek, an imprint of Highlights

Mentor Text for Reading/Writing

• What point of view is the book told through?  How does it make a difference in the story?  Do you think when it is told through 1st point of view, does it take liberties in that the author is making potential guesses at what the person may or may not have said?
• Look at the illustrations, what information do they add to the text?  Since Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea and Fearless Flyer have the same illustrator, do you notice differences between illustrations?  
• Take a look at the end notes.  Which ones do you find most useful?  Which ones serve a purpose for author research?
• When you read narrative biographies, how do you gain information?

Using the text to talk about the person

• Each book has to do with the person's passion - how they followed their passion to their dreams.  However, the road to get to their destination was different for each female.  Compare/contrast.
• Look at character traits of each person and compare and contrast.
• Use these books to talk about the themes of determination, following your dream, crossing boundaries.

Goodreads Summaries:

Miss Mary Reporting

While sitting in the bleachers of a Soap Box Derby in the 1950s, Mary Garber overheard two African-American boys in the following exchange: “See that lady down there?” asked one boy. “That’s Mary Garber. She doesn’t care who you are, but if you do something good, she’ll write about you.”

Mary Garber was a pioneering sports journalist in a time where women were rarely a part of the newspaper business. Women weren’t even allowed to sit in the press boxes at sporting events, so Mary was forced to sit with the coaches’ wives. But that didn’t stop her.

In a time when African-American sports were not routinely covered, Mary went to the games and wrote about them. Garber was a sportswriter for fifty-six years and was the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, presented for major contributions in sports journalism. And now, every year the Association of Women in Sports Media presents the Mary Garber Pioneer Award in her honor to a role model for women in sports media.

Sure to inspire future journalists, athletes, and any child who has a dream, this illustrated biography of Mary Garber captures her feisty and determined spirit and brings her story to life.

Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea

Marie Tharp was always fascinated by the ocean. Taught to think big by her father who was a mapmaker, Marie wanted to do something no one had ever done before: map the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Was it even possible? Not sure if she would succeed, Marie decided to give it a try.

Throughout history, others had tried and failed to measure the depths of the oceans. Sailors lowered weighted ropes to take measurements. Even today, scientists are trying to measure the depth by using echo sounder machines to track how long it would take a sound wave sent from a ship to the sea floor to come back. But for Marie, it was like piecing together an immense jigsaw puzzle.

Despite past failures and challenges—sometimes Marie would be turned away from a ship because having a woman on board was “bad luck”—Marie was determined to succeed. And she did, becoming the first person to chart the ocean floor, helping us better understand the planet we call home.

Fearless Flyer

On November 19, 1916, at 8:25 a.m., Ruth Law took off on a flight that aviation experts thought was doomed. She set off to fly nonstop from Chicago to New York City. Sitting at the controls of her small bi-plane, exposed to the elements, Law battled fierce winds and numbing cold. When her engine ran out of fuel, she glided for two miles and landed at Hornell, New York. Even though she fell short of her goal, she had broken the existing cross-country distance record. And with her plane refueled, she got back in the air and headed for New York City where crowds waited to greet her. In this well-researched, action-packed picture book, Heather Lang and Raúl Colón recreate a thrilling moment in aviation history. Includes an afterword with archival photographs.

Dorothea's Eyes

After a childhood bout of polio left her with a limp, all Dorothea Lange wanted to do was disappear. But this desire not to be seen helped her learn how to blend into the background and observe others acutely. With a passion for the artistic life, and in spite of her family’s disapproval, Dorothea pursued her dream to become a photographer and focused her lens on the previously unseen victims of the Great Depression. This poetic biography tells the emotional story of Lange’s evolution as one of the founders of documentary photography. It includes a gallery of Lange’s photographs, and an author’s note, timeline, and bibliography.