Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen

Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen

Rating: 5 stars

First, I just want to apologize to my neighbor for actually writing about this book. When I told her that I was blogging about books, and trying to shine the spotlight on the Great Ones, she looked at me with slightly wild, very serious eyes. "Don't tell everyone about Violet the Pilot," she said quietly. Now you need to know a few things: First, we live in the woods. There was no one around but our kids to hear her talk...well, maybe a deer or two, or a gang of bluejays. So I thought that was a bit funny. Second, um, not many people are actually reading these words I type, so I think the secret is still pretty much safe.

But don't make it be! Go out and find this book! It is wonderful, especially if you have a little girl in your life! Go get it! Make my neighbor get mad at me--your daughter will thank me!

I just had to get that out.

In all seriousness, this is a Great One. I mean, you know I'm a bit anti-princess and I definitely don't encourage super-duper, over-the-top girly ventures. Steve Breen has come up with the best heroine of them all: a quirky little eight year-old who is a mechanical genius. "By the time she was two, she could fix almost any broken appliance. By four, she could take apart the grandfather clock and completely reassemble it." I am curious how her parents found out that she could fix any broken appliance, and I do wonder how the dexterity of a four year-old would allow her to fix a grandfather clock...but my sarcasm aside, I do know how to suspend my disbelief and it's completely suspended by page 4.

Violet makes flying machines from spare parts she scrapes up from the junkyard next to her family's house. In part because she wants to, finally, be a bit cooler in the eyes of her tormentors at school, she enters a flying contest. She builds her own flying machine--"The Hornet," which does a test flight and everything--and flies off to the show, eager to see what she'll return with...maybe a blue ribbon? Instead of arriving, she flies over a river with in-need-of-rescue boy scouts. She doesn't think twice about whether or not she should help, but her successful rescue attempt makes her miss the air show completely. Her lone friend and dog, Orville, keeps her company as she sits on her bed in disappointment until the entire town comes to her house to reward and award her heroic efforts.

I just love Violet. She's smart and fearless, but also just wants to fit in (like we all do) at school. Breen sneaks in the best detail in one illustration of almost all the books I've read--Orville has a barf bag during the test flight. It makes me smile every time, not that I've pointed it out and therefore taught Lorelei the word "barf." I think that can wait till grade school, unless my husband gets to it before that. (The teaching, I mean, not the barfing.) The contraptions she creates are so unique and pulled together that Lorelei has a great time guessing what each thing is on each flying machine, including the Tub-bubbler, the Bicycopter, the Rocket Can, and Lorelei's favorite, the Wing-a-ma-jig.

A must-read. A must-buy. For every girl you know under the age of 8. Or maybe older!

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