Violet the Pilot - Steve Breen

For: Kids
Pub: 2008
Rating: 4/5
Read: Aug. 24, 2008



Girls can do anything.
Having a great imagination can take you anywhere.
Don't let the jerks get you down.

Violet Van Winkle is smart, spunky, and inspiring. She's a mechanical wiz at eight. She builds interesting flying machines shortly thereafter - made of spatulas, small engines. fans, soap boxes...anything she can find in her father's salvage yard. And she's a fearless pilot. Her trusting and encouraging parents let her go for it. However, she's friendless and teased a lot at school. So she decides to enter an air show contest, hoping that winning it will make the kids at school nicer to her. But on the way to the show she flies above some boy scouts who have overturned in a river, valiantly saving them....and missing the air show.

Da da - she becomes an unwitting hero: "...even the kids and teachers from school had all learned of the rescue that day and had come to praise her." Oh, if only it were that easy! The storyline up to that point is cute, creative, and cleverly illustrated. But the ending falls flat.

I plan to read the book aloud to my class, but not turn to the last page. I'm going to ask the kids to create their own ending. We're going to talk about theme (my middle schoolers generally find this difficult at the beginning of the year, so this is the perfect intro). We're going to talk about how to treat kids who are different than you, or "weirdos". We're going to research famous "weirdos" who have made names for themselves. We're going to create paper airplanes, and talk about careers in flying and aeronautics. And we're going to examine the fantastic illustrations in this book, paying particular attention to Violet's dog, Orville, and the plethora of minute extras on each and every page that add even more to the story.