num_pages: 32
description: Take to the skies with the tale of Sophie Blanchard a woman meant for the air as she discovers the incomparable sensation of flight. Behold the story of Sophie Blanchard a woman who is largely forgotten despite her claim to being the very first female pilot in history. In eighteenth-century France balloonomania has fiercely gripped the nation . . . but all of the pioneering aeronauts are men. The job of shattering that myth falls to a most unlikely figure: a shy girl from a seaside village entirely devoted to her dream of flight. Sophie is not the first woman to ascend in a balloon nor the first woman to accompany an aeronaut on a trip but she will become the first woman to climb to the clouds and steer her own course.
language: English
title: Lighter than Air: Sophie Blanchard, the First Woman Pilot
publisher: Candlewick Press