A Race Around the World: The True Story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland (She Made History)

It is 1889, and Nellie Bly is one of very few female journalists. People had made trips around the world in faster and faster times. A basketball team had gone around the world in only six months, and French author Jules Verne had written a wonderful fiction about a man making the trip in only eighty days. Nellie Bly told her editor she thought she could do it even faster. As she set off on her trip, an editor at Cosmopolitan Magazine decided his female journalist, Elizabeth Bisland, should race Nellie Bly, and he sent Elizabeth on her way, going in the opposite direction. These two women adventurers, traveling alone through exotic lands and stormy oceans, raced to board ships and trains that would carry them closer and closer to their goal.

Author Caroline Starr Rose has written a fun and fascinating story of this amazing true event that will have youngsters enthralled waiting to see which of these women can pull off this amazing feat. The writing is crisp and the story is well-paced. Illustrator Alexandra Bye captures the sense of the time and places in the story perfectly with plenty of excellent details. This is a winner.