'1904 - Alexandra Palace, London. When sixteen-year-old Dolly Shepherd is offered the chance to take to the sky in a hot-air balloon, there's no way she's going to turn it down. Even though the pilot actually plans for her to jump out of the balloon and plummet back to earth using just a flimsy parachute.
For Dolly, it's the start of a sensational career. But the life of an aeronaut is as dangerous as it is daring, and there will be many narrow escapes along the way...'
The Girl With Her Head In The Clouds tells the story of the real life pioneer parachutist Dolly Shepherd. I was only vaguely familiar with the name Dolly Shepherd before reading this book thanks to having looked into pioneering women, but didn't know a huge amount about her; meaning that I was very excited to get to read this book and learn more.
The story begins with Dolly when she is a teenager, just getting ready to leave school and enter the adult world. Straight away we learn that Dolly wasn't a typical young woman of her time, as we see her on the roof of a barn, ready to jump off with nothing but an umbrella to help slow her fall. We also discover that she was expelled from school for throwing a pot of ink at her teacher when he hit her brother in the face and caused him to bleed, something that her parents were secretly proud of her for. Straight away I knew I was going to like Dolly. Her willingness to challenge authority, to stand up to bullies and protect others made me like her straight off the bat.
Despite her love of life and wanting to do something different Dolly is sent off to work in her aunts business in the city once she reaches sixteen, and despite making some friends with the other girls who worked there, she often comes into conflict with her aunt, who wants a 'nice' and 'respectable' niece, not the fun loving daredevil that Dolly is.
Continuing to sneak off at the weekends to visit Alexandra Palace and see the shows. One day she manages to get herself hired as a waitress so that she can get in to watch a performance from composer Philip Sousa. Whilst there, she overhears another performer talking to one of the managers and hears that his show can't go ahead as his wife is sick. Dolly quickly volunteers, only to find herself on stage having an egg shot off her head by a blindfolded man. Well, this just makes Dolly fall in love with daredevil antics even more.
When she's offered the chance to go up in the air on a balloon and jump off with a specially designed parachute she signs up straight away. With the blessing of her parents, Dolly begins to jump from balloons every weekend, building a name for herself as a female daredevil and aeronaut. But she has a few mishaps and dangerous accidents along the way, all of which are covered in the book.
I honestly had no idea how dangerous and how amazing Dolly's life was, how often she put her life at risk in methods that no one today would use. The stunts she performed were not only impressive by the standard of the turn of the twentieth century, but even today. Yet despite that danger, despite the things that go wrong, and the injuries that Dolly receives, she can't help but keep going, to keep jumping.
The Girl With Her Head In The Clouds has a pretty clear message, I think, that when you find something that you love, that brings you joy, you should pursue it. Find a passion, find something that gives you a zest for life, that brings you and others happiness, and live for it. There are so many times in this book that Dolly could have backed down, or was told to stop, yet she always stayed true to herself. She did what she wanted to, she stopped when she was ready, and she helped to inspire others to do similar.
Dolly was the first person to perform a mid-air rescue, she went on to take part in World War One as a part of the Women's Emergency Corps, she became a fire marshal during the Blitz, and even inspired her daughter Molly to follow in her footsteps and become a parachutist. She helped to pave the way for others, and never lost her love for life, and is just the kind of person kids need to read about and emulate.
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