You Can Fly

In this ';masterful, inspiring evocation of an era' (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford ';wields the power of poetry to tell [the] gripping historical story' (Publishers Weekly, starred review) of the Tuskegee Airmen.I WANT YOU! says the poster of Uncle Sam. But if youre a young black man in 1940, he doesnt want you in the cockpit of a war plane. Yet you are determined not to let that stop your dream of flying. So when you hear of a civilian pilot training program at Tuskegee Institute, you leap at the chance. Soon you are learning engineering and mechanics, how to communicate in code, how to read a map. At last the day youve longed for is here: you are flying! From training days in Alabama to combat on the front lines in Europe, this is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the groundbreaking African-American pilots of World War II. In vibrant second-person poems, Carole Boston Weatherford teams up for the first time with her son, artist Jeffery Weatherford, in a powerful and inspiring book that allows readers to fly, too.