The archivists at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum helped by pulling out scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, photographs, and articles about Elinor. Soar, Elinor! is nonfiction, and for me, that meant not one detail, not one word of dialogue, not even a single image could be made up. This was a story I had to tell!Įlinor wrote an autobiography ( Aviatrix by Elinor Smith (Harcourt, 1992)), so it wasn’t hard to pin down the basic facts and write a first draft. By sixteen, she was the youngest pilot in the United States, breaking world records for altitude and endurance. Elinor’s fell in love with airplanes on her first flight at age six.

I grew up in a family of pilots so I’d known Elinor Smith’s incredible story since I was a kid. Gorgeous sweeping illustrations by François Roca show how Elinor pulled off this risky feat skillfully and with style.Ĭould you describe both your pre-and-post contract revision process? What did you learn along the way? How did you feel at each stage? What advice do you have for other writers on the subject of revision?įrom its first spark, Soar, Elinor! seemed meant to be. When male pilots and newspapermen mocked her, Elinor decided to perform an aerial maneuver they thought was impossible: flying under all four bridges that span New York City’s East River. But not everyone thought that girls should fly. From the promotional copy:Įlinor Smith was six when she first went for a ride in a rickety “flying machine,” and she was just sixteen when she earned her aviation license in 1928. Tania's American debut picture book, A New Home, which she both wrote and illustrated, will publish in Spring 2019 by Candlewick Press.Tami Lewis Brown is the first-time author of Soar Elinor (FSG, 2010). When she was five, she moved to Stockholm, Sweden with her family, where she discovered her love of reading and decided that she wanted to be a professional author some day. TANIA DE REGIL is an author and illustrator from Mexico City. Now she lives in one of the oldest houses in Washington, D.C. She has been a lawyer, and more recently, writer-in-residence and librarian at The Sheridan School in Washington, D.C., as well as the author of The Map of Me and Soar, Elinor! Tami grew up in Kentucky and attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

TAMI LEWIS BROWN holds an MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College.

Soar, Elinor! by Tami Lewis Brown