Powder Puff Pilot Unveils Second Children’s Picture Book

For over 40 years, the media has bombarded girls and women with destructive image indoctrination. It's more prevalent than ever now. You can't open up your email these days without seeing some picture of an overweight woman and an ad for some kind of diet product, for example. God forbid that a woman should be even 5 pounds overweight...oh, the horror! (Yet guys can have guts hanging out over their pants, and hey, that's fine.)

It's more important than ever to have good role models from an early age - whether it be real pilots or fiction pilots.

Here's a book for little kids that provides such a role model. Even if it is a bear!

Here's the press release:

Storybook Aviatrix Recounts her First Solo

July 21, 2009, Aurora, Colorado – Powder Puff Pilot—a Denver-based web retailer that specializes in designing and selling products targeted to female pilots—announced the debut of its second children’s picture book, Claire Bear’s Fist Solo, written by Sue Hughes. The colorful, 40-page, soft-cover storybook features a pink-clad aerobatic pilot named Claire Bear (Ursus Aviatrix), who shares the trepidations and thrills of the first time she ever flew by herself—an event that every pilot remembers.

"The World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration:" July 27 -August 2 at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Hughes will unveil her newest children’s book at EAA’s AirVenture, billed as "The World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration," held from July 27 through August 2 at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She’ll be stationed at AirVenture’s Author’s Corner for 6 days of the 7-day event and is scheduled for storytelling sessions on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Claire Bear’s Fist Solo is also available for purchase at www.PowderPuffPilot.com with shipments going out starting August 3.

"I created Claire as my company’s spokesbear to give more visibility to women in aviation," said Hughes, the owner of Powder Puff Pilot, which publishes her children’s books. "One of the missions of Powder Puff Pilot is to make aviation more appealing to girls and women. I’d like girls to know from an early age that there’s a place for them in the cockpit, in the hangar, and in the tower."

The Claire Bear children’s book series also helps pilots share their world with their kids or grandkids in a fun way. In the series’ first book, Claire Bear presents the phonetic alphabet that pilots use on the radio (Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). “The alphabet is something kids can relate to,” said Hughes, author of Claire Bear Presents… The Pilot Alphabet, which debuted in November 2008. “When I take young kids for a flight, the pilot alphabet is what they remember weeks later.” The follow-on Clair Bear’s First Solo introduces aviation lingo such as “traffic,” “tower,” “hold line,” and “throttle;” providing a starting point for discussions with children about flying.

Both books feature color-rich, whimsical illustrations by Wang DaiYu of International Illustrators.

“My next book, which is still in development, is Claire Bear Explains… What Pilots Fly,” said Hughes. “It describes the many different types of aircraft that pilots fly—from balloons to seaplanes to jet fighters. Like the previous two books, it’s written in lyrical rhymes, which I always found enjoyable to read aloud when my kids were little.”

Powder Puff Pilot was founded in 2008 by Sue Hughes, who is also the author of This Day in Women’s Aviation, a page‑a-day calendar [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! ed]. Powder Puff Pilot also carries books for adults that are written by or about women pilots, a T-shirt that explains Why Women Prefer Airplanes (to men), a pink pilot’s logbook, and other products for women pilots—past, present, and future. For further information or to order Powder Puff Pilot products, visit www.PowderPuffPilot.com or call toll-free at 888-801-6628.