Fly, Bessie, Fly

"Far away, far away, Up past the clouds. High away, fly away, And never come down." More than anything, Bessie Coleman wants to fly. As a small child working in a Waxahachie, Texas, cotton field, she likes to imagine she's a bird, getting ready to spread her wings and fly away. Then, when Bessie learns about the black fighter pilots of World War I, she gets the idea that maybe she really can fly. But no one in the United States will teach her how to fly a plane because she's black and a woman. So Bessie goes to France, where she becomes the first black woman in the world to earn a pilot's license -- and where she finally has the chance to soar with the birds. In lyrical prose, Lynn Joseph tells the inspirational true story of aviator Bessie Coleman. Yvonne Buchanan's buoyant watercolor paintings remind us that sometimes even seemingly unattainable dreams are within our reach.