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Jan 27, 2012

Samantha rated it:

I LOVED this book with all my heart! Hands down, one of the best books published for kids in 2011. This biography of Amelia Earhart intersperses the details of her life with the details of her disappearance. The writing is excellent. From the very first page I was hooked and emotionally engrossed. I became worried about Amelia's lack of communication during her last flight and I tore through this book searching for answers. There are many pictures and copies of artifacts (letters etc) and the ch More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Wendy rated it:

In 2009 I heard Candace Fleming say--I think she was in the middle of writing this book--that the more she learned about Amelia Earhart, the less she admired her. I think that comes across in the book, though I don't know whether I would have noticed it or thought about it if I hadn't remembered her saying that. Earhart is a moderately interesting person, but not always for the reasons one might want. I thought it was especially clear that Fleming wasn't thrilled by Earhart carrying on with a ma More...

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Jan 14, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

I love learning something I didn't know, and in this bio I found out that Amelia was the Lady Gaga of her time in terms of self-promotion. I had no idea how carefully she crafted her image, down to curling her straight hair, which she let the public believe was naturally tousled and windblown. I was left with two questions at the end, tho, which were did she ever meet Charles Lindbergh and how DOES one go to the bathroom on those long plane rides?

Also at Reading Rants: http://www.readingrants.org/2011/01/05/a... More...

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Feb 15, 2012

Angie rated it:

Amelia Lost is definitely a fact based biography on Amelia Earhart, but it reads almost like a novel. It alternates between the story of her life and the last hours of her life when she was supposed to land on Howland Island and never did. Her life story is very interesting and in reading it I found that as a person I don't really like Amelia Earhart. Is that bad to say? She has always seemed like a larger than life figure and a pioneer for women. And she certainly was. But she was also reckless More...

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Jan 30, 2012

Elaine rated it:

gr. adv. 4 - 8
Wow, what an amazing story. I love the way the author takes the story of Amelia being lost and pulls that thread through the whole story, interspersing her life story in between. Because you just want to know more. I have not read other biographies about Amelia, but the author talks about how this biography doesn't have the information many others do, because Amelia didn't always tell the truth, even in her autobiographies. Why? Because good publicity and public interest More...

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Jan 11, 2012

Miss rated it:

I wanted to read this because it's on the Mock Newbery shortlist over at School Library Journal's Heavy Medal blog. Nina has this in her top three, so I couldn't pass it over.

This one reminded me of The Watch That Ends The Night because they were very similar in structure. Both take the narrative of the event (the voyage of the Titanic and the life of Amelia Earhart) and frame each chapter with passages about the aftermath of the event. In the case of Amelia Earhart, the story begins More...

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Dec 15, 2011

Bethany rated it:

I don't usually like nonfiction all that much, not even narrative nonfiction, not even biography; I can certainly appreciate nonfiction when it's well-done, but for whatever reason, it just very, very rarely rivets me. Well, I was definitely riveted by this book. Amelia Earhart isn't someone I knew much about; a woman, a pilot, disappeared mysteriously during a flight. I had no idea that she was a teacher at Purdue University, that President Franklin Roosevelt spent taxpayer dollars to build More...

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Nov 05, 2011

Richie rated it:

25 September 2010 AMELIA LOST: THE LIFE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF AMELIA EARHART by Candace Fleming, Schwartz & Wade, March 2011, 128p., ISBN: 978-0-375-84198-9; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-375-94598-4

"A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia it was just a false alarm"-- Joni Mitchell, "Amelia"

"Sometimes it's hard to tell fact More...

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Nov 02, 2011

Miz Lizzie rated it:

Candace Fleming has a gift for finding innovative approaches that suit the subject for telling the stories of famous people. Well researched with the kind of back material that really demonstrates to young readers the breadth and depth of different subjects and sources needed to do good research, Fleming tells Amelia Earheart's story by alternating two storylines. The first starts with the Earheart's mysterious disappearance during her around the world flight. The second follows a more conven More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Treasa rated it:

An amazingly interesting and well-written biography of Amelia Earhart. I admit that I knew next to nothing about Amelia Earhart before reading this book - I knew about her ill-fated flight around the world, but that's about it. Fleming does an amazing job of making this legend a real person - while also adding a great sense of the drama felt by the whole country when she went missing. The way Fleming alternates between a description of something related to Earhart's disappearance and a normal ch More...

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Aug 20, 2011

Tracey rated it:

children's nonfiction; biography. Seems to be well-researched (lots of primary sources, as noted in the annotated bibliography--there are also suggested websites and source notes by chapter) and offers a fairly complete view of Amelia's life, certain aspects of which are dealt with delicately:

On her father's alcoholism: p.20 Earhart's drunkard dad is described as "that angry, thick-tonged stranger who cursed and yelled." A's sister Muriel believed that he "'would have More...

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May 03, 2011

Donna rated it:

After a brief preface on the difficulty of separating fact from fiction (in which she dispells legends like Earhart's claim to have been unimpressed by an airplane at a 1908 fair), Fleming delves into Amelia's 1937 disappearance. Dual narratives cut back and forth between the 17-day search for Earhart's plane and her life story. Fleming has made a great effort to unravel the truth of Earhart's life and disappearance from the myths.

Fleming doesn't portray Earhart as the only or even bes More...

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Apr 13, 2011

Erin rated it:

The best part about this book was its balanced view of Amelia Earhart. I don't remember any other book treating her as anything but a heroic and daring woman who paved the way for women to do great things. Fleming actually includes unflattering stories about Earhart, which makes her seem far more real when combined with the stories one usually hears. And I don't think that telling tales about Amelia looking for publicity makes her achievements any less; they just make her seem like a far more ba More...

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Apr 04, 2011

Marjorie rated it:

Definitely for adults as much as kids. Who knew Amelia Earhart was so image-obsessed? (Her "artless" short coif was carefully created every morning with a curling iron; she created her own narrative and mythmaking from the very start of her career; and even when she needed to dump weight from her plane she kept cards on board she could autograph and sell). She knew she was a brand, and the way she worked that is fascinating. The book delves into her fundraising for her adventures, her More...

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May 25, 2011

Chelsea rated it:

Wow. I think a nonfiction book might have a crack at the Newbery this year. I admit that I haven't read all the other early contenders, but this is by far the best thing I've read all year. Fleming's work in this book is masterful, alternating between the suspenseful moments and days following Earhart's planned arrival on Howland Island during the penultimate leg of her flight around the world with Earhart's childhood and life leading up to her disappearance. Like a lot of people, I thought I ha More...

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Jan 06, 2012

Sam rated it:

It's a good children's biography, one that makes excellent use of chapters that intercut Amelia's life story with her disappearance and its immediate aftermath. The structure goes a long way toward keeping the story interesting for a young reader -- no mean feat, given that we already know even before picking up the book that Amelia won't be found.

I've heard some buzz around this book as a possible Newbery medal contender, and in fact, I read it as prep for the Maryland Mock Newbery More...

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Feb 15, 2012

Betsy rated it:

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally read this gem! I wish I'd had biographies this interesting when I was in school. Fleming does a terrific job of making Earhart both human (and, therefore, full of quirks and less-than-perfect-attributes) and mythological. Somehow she manages to keep the mystique alive even while picking apart Earhart's childhood, early career/aviation training, social life, and final flight. Each chapter of Earhart's life begins with a snippet of details from the More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Pam rated it:

The innovative structure and captivating beginning make this biography a worthy read. It combined a traditional children's biography with the dramatization of the final hours and the documentary style of explaining various aspects of culture, technology, etc. in text boxes. The dramatization drew in the reader beautifully. I can see it capturing children. I also loved how Fleming showed the "branding" aspects of Amelia and was even handed with some of her more ruthless actions. More...

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Sep 07, 2011

Peg rated it:

Candace Fleming was obviously equipped to tackle writing a biography of a person as well known as Amelia Earhart. Using tons of primary sources, she acknowledges the myths (often untrue or exaggerated) but then carefully peels away the layers of story to reveal the real person. It's clear Earhart isn't the most skilled pilot (either male or female) of her time, but she was one who was willing to do the work, put up with the self-aggrandizement, and dream! We all know what happened to Earhart, More...

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Jun 27, 2011

Heidi rated it:

Fleming does a superb job of pulling the reader into Earhart's story. The book is eminently readable and would make a good read-a-loud. Starting with Earhart's idyllic childhood and moving through the difficult years of Amelia's father's alcoholism, the author lets the reader see the forces that shaped the woman that Earhart became. Showing no judgements of Earhart, Fleming simply tells the facts as they are known and leaves the reader to make up his/her own mind about Amelia.

Flemin More...

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Jun 10, 2011

Jessica rated it:

If Amelia Lost hadn't been generating Newbery buzz, I probably wouldn't have picked it up, because I'm not really into reading historical books (fiction or otherwise). But I've always felt some intrigue about the story of Amelia Earhart, along with other unsolved mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle. Amelia Lost tries to separate fact from fiction, and along the way Candace Fleming finds that it's hard to pull apart, as Amelia herself liked to embellish her story. For example, I was fascinated More...

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Dec 14, 2011

Ana rated it:

I love non-fiction written for teens. If it's well done, it's intriguing, it moves along quickly and it provides lots of side stories to peruse if you are tired for a moment of the text. This book interweaves a biography of Amelia Earhart with a narration of the events that led up to her disappearance. I learned so many interesting things.
First of all: Flying back then was way more dangerous than I realized. Your engine could just give out at any moment and you were dead, making it perhap More...

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Aug 27, 2011

Meredith rated it:

VERY interesting. I didn't know much about Amelia before I read this, and now I'm not sure what to think of her. Let's just say that if she lived nowadays, she and her husband would have finagled her top billing on Dancing With the Stars.

The details of the search that were intercut with the chapters about her life were VERY stressful to me ... tragic and traumatic. At first I thought it was a case of Romeo & Juliet ... if modern communications equipment were around, there would be no More...

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Feb 05, 2012

Tessyohnka rated it:

I've read many biographies written for young readers and I find this one quite unusual and not in a good way. I understand that the author lost admiration for Earhart while doing the research for this book and contrary to other reviews I've read here, I think it was obvious in her writing. It's not that I favor sugarcoating the truth for children but I found it strange that Fleming chose to include detail of Putnam's extramarital involvement with Earhart; the drinking problems of both Earhart' More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Julie rated it:

Surprisingly enjoyable, I picked this book up as part of a Mock Newbery selection. The author carefully crafts both a moving and honest portrayal of Amelia's life from the time she was born to her devastating disappearance. The biographical timeline is interspersed periodically with the tale of Amelia's last flight and wraps up with the calling-off of the search and the sadly determined last-ditch efforts of her husband, George Putnam, to find her and keep America reveling in Amelia's name. T More...

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Nov 30, 2011

Kate rated it:

This may be one of my favorite nonfiction titles of all time - I loved the chapters that alternated back and forth between the search for the missing Amelia Earhart and the life that led her to that last voyage. This is narrative nonfiction at its very best...suspenseful, even though you know full well how it all ends. One more thing I love about Candace Fleming's research and writing is the way she paints a hero as a real human being, imperfections and all, and while this biography most certain More...

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Aug 23, 2011

Lisa rated it:

How this story is told is one of the book's strengths. The chapters alternate between her life story and the events of her disappearance. The chapters about her disappearance made it a particularly thrilling read. The book is well-researched, and Fleming uses many direct quotes from Amelia. Compared to other juv non-fiction works where the writing style seems constrained probably by the author's attempt to simplify the writing for kids, her writing style had fluidity that never felt funneled tow More...

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Nov 28, 2011

Sara rated it:

The intro to this book was cool. Usually the author's note is at the end, but putting it at the beginning increased my interest. I chose this book to read because Amelia is part of my family history. I'm related to her through her brother. Anything about her piques my interest.Instead of being a strictly chronological story, you learn a lot about the time period and Amelia as a person. Using photographs for the illustrations just made sense for a biography. The black and white photos help you c More...

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Oct 03, 2011

Ofilia rated it:

Earhart is one of those figures that get written about a lot in biographies for children. I wasn't really excited about reading this one because of that, but I have to admit that I learned a lot. Fleming takes an interesting angle with this biography--she states up front that a lot of the famous stories about Earhart aren't true. She had to do a lot of digging to get to the true details of the aviatrix's life. Even some of the stories Earhart herself told or included in her autobiography were fa More...

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Feb 22, 2012

Arthur rated it:

Reading Level: Grades 3-5

Amelia Earhart was one of the most formidable female pilots of her time, spurring her decision to be the first woman to fly around the world - alone. But a few hours into her flight, Amelia's plane lost radio contact with the ground and became lost. She was never found. Fleming's new biography of Earhart is great for younger readers interested in both the story and the time period.

Other fascinating biographies:

The Great an More...

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