Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton

Author: Meghan McCarthy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013
Age Range: Grades K-3
Lexile: 640L
ISBN: 9781442422629

Recognition
Starred review in Publishers Weekly
Junior Library Guild Selection



I had never heard of Betty Skelton, the subject of Meghan McCarthy's new biography, Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton.  She was quite a remarkable woman, and McCarthy shares the highlights of Skelton's life in this attractive picture book.  The book opens in the early 1930s with Betty as a young girl, sitting on her front porch with a toy airplane as a naval airplane flies overhead.  She grew up next to a navy base in Pensacola, Florida, and that exposure shaped her love of planes and flying.  The book then chronicles her first (not quite legal) solo flight at age 12 and her acquisition of a pilot's license at 16.  As a woman, she was not allowed to become a navy or commercial pilot, so she developed her talents and became a stunt pilot.  After breaking several flying records, she also made a mark in racecar driving and boat jumping.  She also trained at NASA with the Mercury 7 astronauts but ultimately didn't go on the space mission.  After reading about all of Betty Skelton's feats and accomplishments, it is clear that "Daredevil" is an appropriate title for the book.

The length of the book as well as McCarthy's word choice and writing style make this a great read-aloud for students in primary grades.  Both girls and boys will enjoy the descriptions of Betty's tricks, stunts, and records in the air, on the racetrack, and in the water.  There is a strong female empowerment theme throughout the book, as McCarthy mentions several times that Betty's actions were unique and groundbreaking for a woman of that time period.  The playful illustrations in bright primary colors match the text and depict fun facts like Betty's preference for flying barefoot.

The only area of concern in this book is the issue of whether all of the details are portrayed accurately.  Alyson Low's review for School Library Journal addresses this issue (full review can be read on the book's Amazon profile).  Low mentions the fact that the book leads young readers to believe that Betty Skelton prepared for her first solo flight at age 12 just by reading about airplanes.  The book doesn't mention that she had lessons from Ensign Kenneth Wright.  I noticed another issue when reading some of the primary source news articles that Megan McCarthy's webpage links to.  One of the articles, "The Highest-Up Girl is Only 5 Feet High" explains that mechanics gave Betty's tiny plane the name "Little Stinker."  McCarthy's book just says that Betty gave her plane that name.  

Since McCarthy provides convenient access to primary source articles about Betty Skelton, this book would be a great tool to teach students about primary sources and the way that one source may not give the full story. In her book, McCarthy explains that Betty was not included among the Mercury 7 because "NASA wasn't ready to send a woman to space."  In a 1960 newspaper article in the S.F. Examiner, Betty Skelton gave her age as the only reason that she was not sent on a space mission.  NASA would only send people under the age of 35 on space missions, but she would be too old by the time they were ready to launch.  However, in an interview for a later article that was published when Sally Ride became the first American female astronaut, Betty acknowledged that NASA had been discriminatory toward women at the time that she trained with them.  She mentioned that she and other women were only included in the astronaut training because "they were trying to get the public off their backs about not including women."  Even though Daredevil is targeted to children in lower elementary, it could easily be used with older children to teach them how authors use primary sources and the way that different sources can give conflicting accounts of events and situations.

Below is footage of Betty Skelton flying in 1948.  It was posted on YouTube by the Florida Memory Project.

In this video, Megan McCarthy talks about her artistic process as she paints an illustration for Daredevil.

Click Here to see Betty's airplane, "Little Stinker," on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Learn more about Betty Skelton by checking out the resources on Megan McCarthy's webpage for Daredevil.