BYLINES: A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY OF NELLIE BLY
By Sue Macy
(2009) Starred Review. Grades 4 to 6. The life story of this daring news reporter, globetrotter, and advocate for women's rights is presented chronologically from birth to death. By seamlessly weaving her subject's accomplishments as a national figure with her personal life, Macy offers a masterful account of how Bly and turn-of-the-century American society shaped one another. There is at least one period photo, map, or artifact per spread, as well as several full- and double-page visuals. Insightful captions relate the illustrations to the surrounding text. This meticulously researched and elegantly presented account also provides readers and teachers with a plethora of additional material: a date-by-date time line of Bly's life, museums to visit, and videos to watch. The ample index features just about every supporting character mentioned in the book and uses boldfaced page numbers to indicate illustrations. - From School Library Journal
Getting The Real Story
By Sue Davidson
(1993) Grades 4 to 6. Davidson offers disclaimers for the use of imaginary scenes, details, and incidents, calling her work an ``imaginative reconstruction of events.'' It is hoped that students will be able to separate fact from fiction by reading the "Outline of Life Events'' that precedes each woman's tale. The readable and interesting stories focus on their personal and professional failures and achievements. For a more detailed, in-depth look at one of the subjects, select Elizabeth Ehrlich's Nellie Bly (Chelsea House, 1989). A brief biographical sketch of Wells is available in Dorothy : Sterling's Black Foremothers (Feminist Press, 1988). Davidson's work, although a good blending of fact and fiction, will be most useful as a smooth-flowing introduction to the lives of these two 19th-century crusaders. - From School Library Journal
It Can’t Be Done, Nellie Bly!: A Reporter’s Race Around The World
By Nancy Butcher and Jen L. Singh
(2003) Grades 3 to 6. Bly's journey is simply described, capitalizing on the inherent drama of her race against time and, later, a competitor. Butcher offers readers clear explanations of the ways in which travel and career opportunities for women differed in 1889. The young woman's limited knowledge of the places and cultures she visited was reflected in her news stories of raw impressions rather than the informed insight of today's small world. This lively account follows Bly from New York to London, France, Italy, Egypt, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, San Francisco, and triumph in Hoboken, NJ. Her travel attire and remarkably meager luggage are described, along with climatic changes, struggles with the telegraph system to file stories and receive information, and efforts to obtain required travel documents. The book contains additional information about the reporter's life, making it a satisfying biography suitable for reports and recreational reading. Fun, factual, and well written. - From School Library Journal
Making Headlines: A Biography Of Nellie Bly
By Kathy Lynn Emerson
(1989) Grade 4 to 8. Aspiring young journalists should enjoy this easy-flowing biography of Nellie Bly. Elizabeth Cochrane (Nellie Bly) began her career in the 1880s in Pennsylvania when she argued with an editor as to what constitutes "ladylike behavior." She developed a reputation as a radical female reporter by choosing to write about controversial subjects, often finding herself in the role of "victim" in order to give complete exposes. She was also known for her travelogues of Mexico and, most notably, her race to beat the fictitious Phileas Fogg's trip around the world in 80 days. - School Library Journal
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Nellie Bly (History Maker Biography)
By Shannon Knudsen
(2006) Ages 8 to 12. Nellie Bly made her name as a reporter at a time when few newspapers would hire a woman. She asked bold questions and wrote important, exciting stories. Bly is best known for her 1889 thrilling race to be the first to travel around the world faster than anyone ever had. That feat made her the most famous woman in the world. This is a great biography aimed at the middle to upper elementary grades. The reader of this book can learn a great deal about early newspapers. Its large print gives just enough information on each page, leaving room for illustrations, photographs, and a few items from newspapers and flyers. There is a time line, "The Nellie Bly Guessing Match," further reading, websites, a select bibliography and an index included. A well-illustrated and colorful front cover will attract readers. There is a little synopsis on the back cover and a listing of the History Maker Bios which includes all kinds of famous persons and will help a middle reader find another biography for pleasure and/or for assigned reading. - From BarnesandNoble.com
Nellie Bly’s Monkey
By Joan Blos and Catherine Stock
(1996) Ages 4 to 8. Newbery Medalist Blos recounts reporter Nellie Bly's celebrated 1889 voyage around the world from an inventive if not entirely successful perspective. The narrator is McGinty, the fez-wearing monkey that Bly purchased in Singapore. In brief chapters, the observant creature dryly describes what the two do and see in their remaining ports of call, including Hong Kong, Yokohama and San Francisco. The news that another female American reporter is also circling the globe in an attempt to beat Bly's time adds tension to the account. However, a tone of forced formality, presumably aimed at echoing the style of the period, may be off-putting to kids. Most of the charm here radiates from Stock's illustrations, every stroke suggestive of her subjects' personalities. Detailed, full-page watercolors evoke the diverse settings of the text, while line art conjures up telling vignettes. - From Publisher's Weekly
Nellie Bly: A Name To Be Reckoned With
By Stephen Krensky and Rebecca Guay
(2003) Grades 3 to 4. This paperback original from the Milestone Books series features Nellie Bly, who came to the attention of the Pittsburgh Dispatch with a letter to the editor signed Lonely Orphan Girl. The editors decided to hire her even though young women were not routinely employed in 1885. Over the next decade Bly made her mark through muckraking journalism and her fame with a 72-day trip around the world. Krensky brings Bly's story to life in this vivid account of her years as a journalist. Well suited to readers in the chapter-book stage, the page design is kid friendly. Guay contributes a number of lively, attractive black-and-white illustrations. A chronology and a bibliography are appended. - From Booklist
Nellie Bly: Daredevil Reporter
By Charles Fredeen
(1999) Ages 9 to 12. Slim enough to read in time for tomorrow's homework assignment, this accessible biography delivers just what it promises: an ``informative and inspiring'' story of the life of an influential individual. Readers familiar with Bly's ingenious brand of stunt journalism will be intrigued to learn that she was also an inventor and business owner as well as a suffragette with a social conscience. Black-and-white photographs, etchings, and copies of newspaper articles lend authenticity and immediacy to this fast-paced tale of girl-makes-good. Fredeen doesn't dwell on whether Bly was a happy woman in his necessarily brief overview of her life and times, but he relies upon the records to make real a young woman of innovation and spirit. - From Kirkus Reviews
NELLIE BLY: DAREDEVIL, REPORTER, FEMINIST
By Brooke Kroeger
(1995) Grades 6 and Above. This is the definitive work on the reporter who traveled around the world in 72 days in 1889-1890 and was one of the pioneer women journalists. Nellie Bly started her career in Pittsburgh, at age 21, in 1885. She then moved to New York City in 1887 and wrote for the World until 1895, with one three-year hiatus. In 1895 she married a wealthy 70-year-old entrepreneur, Robert Seaman, and proved herself an astute business executive--except that she trusted her financial associates, who embezzled more than a million dollars and bankrupted her firm, which manufactured steel barrels. She returned to journalism in 1912 and covered WW I on the Eastern front from 1914 until 1919 as the only American woman reporter. Back in Manhattan she worked at the Evening Journal as a sort of Miss Lonelyhearts and amateur social worker until her death in 1922. Kroeger, a former reporter and editor for UPI, has done a prodigious amount of research for this compelling, if somewhat overlong biography. - From Publisher's Weekly
THE ALCHEMY OF MURDER
By Carol McCleary
(2010) A NELLIE BLY NOVEL! Paris 1889. The Alchemist is how I've come to think of him; he has a passion for the dark side of knowledge, mixing murder and madness with science. Nellie Bly - reporter, feminist and amateur detective - is in Paris on the trail of an enigmatic killer. The city is a dangerous place: an epidemic of Black Fever rages, anarchists plot to overthrow the government and a murderer preys on the prostitutes who haunt the streets of Montmartre. But it is also a city of culture, a magnet for artists and men of science and letters. Can the combined genius of Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur help Nellie prove a match for Jack the Ripper?
THE DARING NELLIE BLY: AMERICA’S STAR REPORTER
By Bonnie Christensen
(2009) Grades 3 to 5. This picture book for older readers tells Nellie Bly's fabulous story: a riches-to-rags childhood; a job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch when no woman had such a thing; a move to New York, where she went undercover in an insane asylum and then wrote the story for the New York World. She bested the fictional hero Jules Verne by going around the world--alone-- in 72 days, and she was a war correspondent during World War I. In an easy-to-read style, Christensen lets Bly's story tell itself, and her art, as it was in Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People (2001), is powerful and rich in color. She uses strong black line to outline figures, add detail, and emphasize vivid facial expression in oversize pictures that are full of movement and action. Children will thrill to the true-life story. - From Booklist
‘Round The World With Nellie Bly
This game was published in the pages of The World the day after Nellie Bly returned home from her record-setting trip. It featured a circular board that highlighted many of the places Nellie visited or passed through on her journey. The game was published as a full set later in 1890 by McLoughlin Brothers, and again in the 1920's by Milton Bradley.
American Experience: Around The World In 72 Days
(1997) As a child Nellie Bly was nicknamed "Pink," but as the first female "stunt" reporter she proved to be anything but a traditional woman. This hour-long PBS documentary, part of The American Experience series, examines Bly's life and career from her mill-town childhood through her famous trip around the world and the eventual decline of her popularity. Narrated by David Ogden Stiers, the program includes interviews with biographers and historians, as well as period photographs and engravings that eloquently evoke turn-of-the-century America. But while the video provides an entertaining and informative look at Bly's most notorious accomplishments--her clever job-hunting ruse, the 10 days she spent in an insane asylum to do research for her first exposé, her race to beat the record set by Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg--there is one element sorely missing: Bly herself. Though she did not keep many letters or a journal, she was a reporter, and the program could have been enhanced by excerpts from her articles. That said, the documentary is well worth watching as a portrait not only of a woman who refused to let society's expectations determine her lot in life, but also of a time in America when sensational journalism resulted in social reform rather than lawsuits.
Nellie Bly Stamp
On September 14, 2002, Nellie Bly was honored by the United States Post Office with the issuance of a 37 cent commemorative postage stamp. Nellie's stamp is part of a collection of four under the title "Women In Journalism" also featuring Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne and Ida M. Tarbell.
The Adventures Of Nellie Bly
Linda Purl stars as Nellie Bly, famed 19th century female journalist, in this "Classics Illustrated" TV movie. A tireless crusader, Nellie exposes corruption amongst the rich of New York and miserable working conditions amongst the poor. In her most famous exploit, Nellie decides to emulate Jules Verne's Phineas Fogg by travelling around the world in 80 days-or less. Gene Barry, Raymond Buktenica, J.D. Cannon and John Randolph costar, the last-named actor playing Nellie's boss Joseph Pulitzer. Filmed in 1979, The Adventures of Nellie Bly was first telecast June 11, 1981.
