You might have liked Amelia Earhart when she was a little girl. She seemed to dig up adventure wherever she went. Amelia invented pretend worlds, hunted rats, and tried to make the manna described in the Bible out of flour and sugar. She even tried flying without a plane.

Well, she didn’t exactly try. It was an accident. Amelia, her sister Muriel, and a neighbor boy built a homemade roller coaster in the Earharts’ yard in Kansas City. The top of the coaster began on the roof of a shed. They built a track out of boards. Then they rubbed lard on the boards to make them slippery. It wasn’t a good idea. Amelia slid down the slope first. She rode in a wooden crate. The crate fell fast . . . and then faster. . . until it flew off the track! Amelia tumbled to the ground. She could have been hurt. But was she afraid? No way! She yelled with joy. She said, “It’s just like flying!”

For Amelia, that was the first flight of many. Ever since she was a little girl, Amelia did things people thought only boys could do. She learned to play sports. She rode her sled lying down instead of sitting up—something people called “unladylike.” But Amelia’s tomboyish ways led her to become a great pilot. In 1921, Amelia was 24. She bought a bright yellow plane she called The Canary. A year later, she flew The Canary 14,000 feet in the air. No female pilot had ever flown a plane that high before. In 1928, she received one of her greatest honors. She became the first woman to fly over the Atlantic Ocean!