Kalpana Chawla
Discover the true story of Kalpana Chawla, the girl from a small Indian town who counted the stars and grew up to fly among them.
Little Kalpana grew up in Karnal, drawing aeroplanes in her schoolbooks and watching little planes at the flying club near her home. She studied how aeroplanes are built at a time when few girls did, then flew across the world to America to learn more, and became a pilot and a scientist at NASA.
In 1997 she flew on the space shuttle Columbia and became the first woman born in India to go to space. She told children everywhere to follow their dreams and work hard to reach them. The book tells the end of her life gently, and celebrates how her dream lives on.
The book ends with "What Kalpana taught us": six lessons from her life, each beside the moment it comes from, for grown-ups and children to talk about together.
Atlas Of Greats is a series of true picture-book biographies of the world's greats, for ages 3 to 7. Each book follows one person from childhood, in short pages made for reading aloud.
Specs
- Format
- Digital PDF, 32 pages
- Size
- 8.5 × 8.5 in
- Ages
- 3 to 7
Facts for kids
- Kalpana grew up in Karnal, in the state of Haryana. Her name means 'imagination'.
- She studied how to build aeroplanes at Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh.
- On her first trip to space in 1997, she went around the Earth 252 times in about 16 days.
- She had a licence to teach flying, and she could fly seaplanes and planes with more than one engine.
- In 2003, India named a weather satellite Kalpana-1 after her.
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