The Daring Nellie Bly: America’s Star Reporter

Christensen, Bonnie. The Daring Nellie Bly: America’s Star Reporter. New York: Knopf, 2003. ISBN: 0-375-81568-6

Awards: Notable Social Studies Trade Book, 2004. NCTE Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book, 2004.

Author / Illustrator Website: http://www.bonniechristensen.com/

Media: Pen and Ink on paper, stylized to match drawing style popular during subject’s lifetime.

Use of Simile: (p. 3) “dared to defy”

Use of Onomatopoeia: (p. 14) “the expose that would blaze across the World’s front page.”

Curricular Connection: California History / Social Science, Grades 11, California, Standard 11.10.7: Analyze the women’s rights movement from the era of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the movement launched in the 1960s, including differing perspectives on the roles of women.

Special Notation: Non-fiction

Annotation: From the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, a bold and talented woman named Nellie Bly used her writing post at the New York World newspaper to educate readers about women’s rights, mental health issues and the first world war.

Personal Reaction: Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochran, volunteered to go undercover as a patient in an insane asylum in order to write about the horrific conditions in the asylum for the New York World newspaper. Bly later captured worldwide attention by traveling around the world in a record breaking 72 days. Bly was also one of the first newspaper reporters to report from the front lines of World War I. Bonnie Christensen writes about Nellie Bly’s life with a voice that puts readers on the front lines of Bly’s life. “When the asylum doors slammed behind her, she was on her own,” (p.14) Christensen writes about Bly’s undercover reporting from the asylum. This picture book for older readers about Bly’s life gave me a firm sense of Bly’s character and personality. When Bly’s newspaper editor worries about sending a woman around world alone and suggests the trip would be better suited to a man, Bly’s retort is “Start the man and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him,” (p.3). I think that young readers, particularly girls, would be inspired by Bly’s life which Christensen captures with enthusiasm in this biography. Christensen tells the story of a bold woman with an unconventional life for the times she lived in: Bly is a child of divorce, groundbreaking in her career and an early advocate for women’s rights. Bly’s fascinating and adventurous life is told against a backdrop of simple pen and ink drawings that conjure up the 1800’s. Christensen’s old-fashioned illustrations serve as a strong contrast to Bly’s not so old-fashioned life, reminding readers just how ahead of her time Nellie Bly was in her endeavors as a star newspaper reporter.