This riveting nonfiction picture book biography explores both the
failures and successes of self-taught engineer Emma Lilian Todd as she
tackles one of the greatest challenges of the early 1900s: designing an
airplane.
Emma Lilian Todd's mind was always soaring--she loved to solve problems.
Lilian tinkered and fiddled with all sorts of objects, turning dreams
into useful inventions. As a child, she took apart and reassembled
clocks to figure out how they worked. As an adult, typing up patents at
the U.S. Patent Office, Lilian built the inventions in her mind,
including many designs for flying machines. However, they all seemed too
impractical. Lilian knew she could design one that worked. She took
inspiration from both nature and her many failures, driving herself to
perfect the design that would eventually successfully fly. Illustrator
Tracy Subisak's art brings to life author Kirsten W. Larson's story of
this little-known but important engineer.