To the Library and Beyond Spring has arrived, but the weather is still cool and even chilly! As of this writing on April 2, some of the surrounding mountains have received a small snow overnight, including Cottonwood Butte! However, it’s warm inside the library, and it’s a great place to settle in for some nice reading! A good place to start with your reading is to look at a biography of Amelia Earhart, titled “Winged Legend – The Life of Amelia Earhart”. This book has been reviewed by Joan and is highly recommended for some interesting reading. Amelia Earhart was a famous early American woman pilot. The book begins by tracing her early life from her junior high and early high school years in Des Moines, Iowa, and then late high school in Chicago. She graduated from high school in 1916. She then became a nurse’s aide in Toronto, Canada, and nursed soldiers wounded during World War 1 for almost a year. There she became interested in aviation but also started school as a premed student at New York’s Columbia University. After 1.5 years, she decided not to become a doctor and dropped out of Columbia. She moved to California and started taking flying lessons in 1920. She was the first woman to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation in Los Angeles. Her parents bought her her first airplane for her 24th birthday in July 1922. She set a new women’s record for flying to the highest altitude at 14,000 feet in October 1922. She then moved to Boston with her mother and sister, taught English for a couple of years, then became an apprentice social worker in late 1926. In April 1928, she was signed on by Army Captain H. Railey as the first woman to fly a plane across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to the English Channel and Wales with another pilot and a mechanic. They made this trip in June 1928, and Amelia became an instant celebrity. She pursued various activities and flights over the next several years, and then began her round-the-world flight in June of 1937 with her navigator Fred Noonan. They left from Miami flying east and following the equator. They flew 22,000 miles in 40 days and had about 7,000 miles left before reaching Oakland, CA. Then at some point over the Pacific, her plane ran out of gas, went down, and they were never heard from again. This is a very interesting biography of a truly courageous woman. The library has quite a few biographies of famous and not-so-famous people. Why not come on in and take a look at them?! Also, for lovers of history, there are many books on the shelves treating various aspects of American and other history. The library has a comprehensive nonfiction section, but also lots of current, as well as classical fiction, for your perusal. So while the weather is chilly but also when it’s warmer, we’d love to see you!
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