Talkin’ about Bessie

  In a vol­ume that looks like a pic­ture book … Grimes offers a many-sided por­trait of the first African-Amer­i­can avi­a­trix, Bessie Cole­man … The speak­ers range from moth­er to sis­ter to field hand to flight instruc­tor to news reporter to preach­er, but teller by teller, the sto­ry moves chrono­log­i­cal­ly and builds emo­tion­al­ly to last entry, where Bessie speaks of the joy of fly­ing … The verse reads aloud beau­ti­ful­ly, mak­ing this book a good choice for read­ers’ the­ater or for read­ing aloud in con­junc­tion with the art­work, which shows up to good advan­tage from a dis­tance. Although there have been oth­er books about Cole­man, this is a fine, orig­i­nal por­tray­al. (Book­list, starred review)