After its own journey with plenty of twists and turns, my picture book biography AWAY WITH WORDS, THE DARING STORY OF ISABELLA BIRD, is on the bookshelves. Like many people, I hadn't heard about this Victorian traveler before, but when I discovered that she was the first female member of England's Royal Geographical Society and wrote 10 bestselling books about her explorations around the world, I was hooked. Isabella rode spider-legged horses, belligerent camels, and wide, willful elephants across five continents. Nothing--frostbite, cholera, broken bones, volcanic burns, attacks and several near drownings--could quench her thirst to explore the unknown.
"No man," she once declared, "now ever says of any difficult thing that I could not do it!"
“Sure to inspire the explorers of tomorrow…straightforward prose that has a poetic spark...The crux of this unforgettable tale is that if you can dream big and be brave, anything is possible.” ---Bookpage