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Kaethe

Kaethe

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Flygirl

Flygirl - Sherri L. Smith

Originally Veronica picked it up at a school book sale. So, yes, I've been meaning to read it since she was in elementary school.

 

But Natasha spotted it and read it as part of her 40 Book Genre Challenge for school. And she loved it. So then I started it, and it was on my bedside table when the crew swept in, removed everything from my house, made the floor 3/4 of an inch taller and put everything more-or-less-back. So on the day itself, when I had time to read, I couldn't lay hands on a single book. But after a week I opened a box labeled "organic cabbages"* and there it was. Also, my alarm clock.

 

So, yay, I got to finish it, which means Natasha can loan it to someone else who is waiting after Thanksgiving break. And no surprise here, I loved it. Well, duh. Books about flight captivate me, ever since The Little Prince and A Girl Can Dream. I didn't quite grow up with photographs of Kitty Hawk and biplanes on my wall, but I have always loved books about flying. And yeah, my father was in the Air Force, and I still bear a grudge because they wouldn't teach me to fly jets.

 

Sorry. Ida Mae Jones, unlike me, could actually fly a plane. Her father had one for crop dusting and she'd grown up in it. But with rationing and war, she can't get fuel, and with being a woman, she couldn't get a license from a sexist inspector. She's had to give up on the idea of flying, until she sees a photo of a Chinese American WASP. Maybe Uncle Sam's need for pilots is stronger than racism, she thinks. Well, no. So she spends the rest of the book trying to pass as white. On top of the sexism against WASP, it's a very tough row to hoe. How Ida Mae goes from being a maid in Louisiana to a successful wartime pilot is a marvelous story. She puts up with so much (racism, sexism, classism, bureaucratic indifference) that you can't help but root for her and her classmates.

 

And a shout out to the author for links/bibliography on WASP. Looking at the photos of the period added depth to the whole thing. Especially seeing Walt Disney's gremlin.

 

 

 

* We fundamentally misunderstood how this was going to happen, you see: we thought the crew would lay floor in one room at a time and we would sort of move everything out and right back. Instead, the crew stripped the entire house, put down floor in every room simultaneously, and put everything back. Except all the books and stuff had been placed in boxes marked with liquor brands or "organic cabbage", nothing had an individual or specific label as to what was inside it. Not my brightest moment.