Amelia Lost Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming is a nonfiction mystery. What happened to famed pilot Amelia Earhart on her bid to fly around the world? Where did she go wrong? And why is her disappearance still fascinating to us 75 years later? Summary of Amelia Lost In Amelia Lost, biographer Candace Fleming follows up her acclaimed works on P. T. Barnum, the Lincolns, and Eleanor Roosevelt with a fascinating look at aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Fleming’s meticulous research combines with her storytelling expertise to craft an account of Earhart that manages to breathe life into the legendary figure’s mysterious disappearance. Even though the reader knows that Amelia never returned from her fatal flight, the book’s structure and Fleming’s pacing manage to build suspense and create tension. The author intersperses accounts from the viewpoints of the many people concerned about Amelia’s whereabouts with accounts of her early years and her career, allowing the reader to know Amelia as more than a one-dimensional historic figure. We recommend Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart for ages 10 and older. The Books Contents Most biographies of Earhart aimed at juvenile audiences focus on her fun-filled Kansas childhood and her desire to be a pilot at a time when women were not encouraged to climb into the cockpit and risk their lives. But Fleming digs a little deeper into Earhart’s youth and discusses not only her tomboy escapades, but also her father’s alcoholism and other family troubles. Amelia’s teen years were marked by the influences of her father’s â€Å"sickness† and the effects it had on his career. Amelia’s family moved from Atchison KS to Kansas City, Des Moines, St. Paul and eventually Chicago and each move was a step down on the social ladder. Amelia’s college efforts were scattered and halfhearted. Then she volunteered as a nurse in Canada during World War I and became fascinated by the airplanes on the nearby airfield. But her first urges to fly were stymied by the fact that women were not allowed to fly. As she said â€Å"Not even a general’s wife† was allowed to take to the air. By the time Amelia Earhart returned to the United States, she had already been bitten by the flying bug. Her fascination was increased after she attended an air show in California in 1920 and she became determined to learn to fly. She worked hard to earn enough money for lessons and found a female pilot willing to take her on as a student. Amelia had finally found her place in the sky. The author expounds on Amelia’s early efforts as a pilot and how she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, and she portrays Amelia’s relationship with George Putnam in an age-appropriate manner. She gives the reader some interesting details about Amelia’s willingness to be a public figure and her efforts to promote women in aviation. But the most compelling stories in the book are the accounts of her last flight of Amelia Earhart and the massive attempts to locate her after all contact was lost with her plane on July 2, 1937. The author searched communication logs and news stories, as well as primary documents submitted to the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. These documents include diary entries and records of conversations from citizens who claimed to have heard Amelia calling for help in her last hours. Amelia Lost: Our Recommendation We recommend Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart for ages 10 and up. The book has a lot to offer in terms of engaging young readers’ interest and historical information. By weaving the stories of Amelia’s final hours that we know of with the story of her life, Candace Fleming not only builds interest, but she also engages the reader in the immediacy and importance of Amelia’s disappearance. The 118-page book is filled with photos, news items, and memorabilia ranging from Amelia’s grade card to a note to Amelia from her co-pilot, Fred Noonan. The book includes a bibliography, index and suggestions for more information on the Web. Students looking for information about Amelia Earhart’s life for reports will find a wealth of biographical information in this work. Young readers looking for an interesting non-fiction book about a fascinating subject will be enthralled by this depiction of Amelia’s life and her disappearance. Pair this with The Roaring 20: The First Cross-Country Air Race for Women by Margaret Blair (National Geographic, 2006) for inspiring stories of other early female pilots. About Author Candace Fleming Candace Fleming has written numerous books for young readers ranging from the popular picture book Muncha, Muncha, Muncha to the award-winning biography The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary. She deftly blends her love of history with her ability to engage very young readers in history-based picture books such as Boxes for Katje and A Big Cheese for the White House: The True Tale of a Tremendous Cheddar. Candace Fleming has also written fiction books for elementary school students, including The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop School. Her 2011 biography of Amelia Earhart is her 26th published work. (Source: Official Web site of Candace Fleming) Bibliographic Information Title: Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia EarhartAuthor: Candace FlemingPublisher: Schwartz Wade Books, An Imprint of Random House Childrens Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.Publication Year: 2011ISBN: 9780375841989 Additional Resources for Middle Grade Readers Who Enjoy History If your middle grade readers also enjoy historical fiction, check out our annotated reading list, linked to reviews, at Award-Winning Historical Fiction for Middle Grade Readers. Edited by Elizabeth Kennedy.

Wal Mart free essay sample

Many people continue to support Wal-Mart because they do not think they can afford to shop anywhere else. There is an element of truth to this, and of course, it is part of Wal-Marts plan kill off every low-cost competitor. In short, Wal-Mart creates poverty and then it becomes the store of last resort for victims of poverty. (Sprawlbusters) Big-box stores like Wal-Mart are detrimental in many ways to our quality of life. In 1998 Home Depot and Wal-Mart built more than 250 new stores, adding 33+million feet of retail space to America. Heres the argument against sprawl, made by the website Sprawlbusters: Sprawl is defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as poorly planned, low-density, auto-oriented development that spreads out from the center of communities. The 10 sins of retail sprawl * It destroys the economic and environmental value of land * It encourages an inefficient land-use pattern that is very expensive to serve. * It fosters redundant competition between local governments, an economic war of tax incentives. * It forces costly infrastructure development at the edge of towns. * It causes disinvestment from established core commercial areas. It requires the use of public tax support for revitalizing rundown core areas. * It degrades the visual, aesthetic character of local communities. * It lowers the value of other commercial and residential property, reducing public revenues. * It weakens the sense of place and community cohesiveness. * It masquerades as a form of economic development. http://www. sprawl-busters. com/caseagainstsprawl. html Wal-Mart is not alone in contributing to sprawl, but Wal-Mart is far worse in its evil practices and ill effects than any other retail company. Wal-Mart is not just the worlds largest retailer. Its the worlds largest companybigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244. 5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J. C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. http://www. fastcompany. com/magazine/77/walmart. html But Wal-Mart is not worse merely because it is bigger; it is bigger because it is worse. An annual list of the most ethical companies in the world includes some Wal-Mart competitors. Target, Trader Joes, Wegmans, Gap, Best Buy, and IKEA are on it this year, but Wal-Mart has never been on it. Costco is another Wal-Mart competitor that keeps prices down while treating workers decently. Costco CEO Jim Senegal pays workers more and himself less (this is a CEO who can live on just a half million bucks a year! ), allows some workers to be unionized, and still runs a profitable business. http://webhost. bridgew. edu/jhayesboh/badbusiness. html In contrast, Wal-Marts CEO made more than $19 million last year (after a $7 million pay cut), while keeping employee wages and benefits at poverty levels. Wal-Marts pay forces tens of thousands of employees to apply for food stamps and Medicaid. Some larger Wal-Mart stores have welfare offices in the store for the people who work there. http://webho st. bridgew. edu/jhayesboh/badbusiness. html Wal-Marts pay and benefit policies are costing US taxpayers billions of dollars. On April 26, as part of a campaign called Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart, five members of Congress joined womens advocates and labor leaders to assail the company for not paying its female employees more, according to a NY Times article. In December Wal-Mart agreed to pay $40 million to settle the largest wage-and-hour class-action settlement in Massachusetts history after fighting it for eight years. The case is one of many: in December, the merchant agreed to pay up to $640 million to settle 63 federal and state class-action wage-and-hour lawsuits. Wal-Mart also damages the American economy by pressuring the companies who supply it. On basic products it demands profit-killing concessions from vendors, paying less each year. Suppliers have been compelled to lay off employees and close US plants if they want to keep Wal-Marts business. Sure, its held inflation down, and its great to have bargains, but you cant buy anything if youre not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs. http://www. fastcompany. om/magazine/77/walmart. html One supplier closed his factory because of Wal-Marts demands. In January, he lost money on a Wal-Mart order. A few months later, he was asked to make 10,000 intricately worked cardigans for the retailer within a week. The sample already bore a Wal-Mart price tag: $8. 47. You cant make it here at that price, Reed said at the time. Not legally, anyway. http://www. pulitzer. org/archives/6831 Other than supplying increasingly cheap and crappy products, Wal-Mart does little to serve its customers. H eres one rant: On any given day I can go to my local Wal Mart and buy a box of bullets, a pack of smokes, a movie full of swearing with either some killing or fucking in it and a video game that has a lot of killing in it but I cant pick up an unedited Eminem CD? Whats up with that? Do I even need to get into the recent censoring of books? Both America the Book by the people from the Daily Show on Comedy Central and George Carlins new book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? were pulled from the shelves of Wal Mart across the US because they were found to be objectionable. http://www. disgruntledhuman. com/wmrtnf. htm