There is probably a narrative reason why Chris Van Allsburg did not include the cat. A cat in a picture book is as important as a human character. Readers will be as anxious about the cat as they are about the woman, leading to a double climax in which the first survival inevitably saps emotion away from the second. ANAGNORISIS The only woman who ever made the trip through the rapids is Miss Sadie Allen. The date of her trip was November 28th, 1886, and her companion was George Harlett, who, on August 8th of the same year, had been through the rapids with William Potts. They used the same barrel used by Hazlett and Potts. Miss Allen’s trip ended at the whirlpool. “The Heroes of Niagara”, The Wide World Magazine NATURAL SETTINGS — The Niagara Falls; magnificent waterfalls which attract many tourists. In English words don’t carry gender, but many things do carry symbolic gender. Waterfalls are generally gendered feminine. The illustrations below may partly explain why; the fall of water is reminiscent of a young woman’s cascading hair. Ida Rentoul Outhwaite The Waterfall Fairy The Enchanted Forest 1921 Ida Rentoul Outhwaite 1888 – 1960 The Waterfall Fairy coloured By creating this book, Chris Van Allsburg has made many people aware of a character from American history which we would never have known about otherwise.

Writers are often told to give a character both a psychological and a moral shortcoming when writing. Van Allsburg decides that Annie was ‘proud’. Like Walter White in Breaking Bad, who ends up washing his students’ cars over summer, Annie is assumed to be too proud to do domestic work. But as I said, I think there’s more to it than that. Interestingly, when it comes time to get inside the barrel, Annie is described as ‘modest’ when she requires the men to turn away. ‘Modest’ is in some ways the inverse of ‘proud’. But perhaps you can be both. Also, sometimes ‘modest’ refers only to the wish not to display yourself in an exposing manner, which might be another outworking of ‘proud’. DESIRE She went over the falls alright, but she wasn't able to turn that into the money she had hoped. People would see her and they lost interest when they saw a grandma saying she went over the falls. How sad, right. Since there there have been 8 other people to do the same thing, the last as late as 1995. I simply can't imagine why you would want to do something like that. And what a silly woman you might find me, all this time spent imagining the spitting up of perfectly good spinach, picturing you as Aphrodite and Marilyn, singing about ribbons falling from our hair. You'd be right about how foolish I am in some ways, except that I am capable of reform. At least that's what I'd say once I talked you into my company, because I'd say anything to keep you near." Considering that this is a work of nonfiction, it seems odd to say that the book this reminded me of the most was Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. Yet both books take realistic pictures and use their sepia-toned worlds to inform our own. That said, the book that would probably pair better in terms of subject matter would have to be the Julie Cummins title Women Daredevils: Thrills Chills and Frills (in which Annie does indeed make an appearance). I’ve always loved Van Allsburg’s magical realism fantasies, but this new venture into reality itself is so appealing that I can only hope that he continues in this vein for some time. A book that honors its subject and grants her posthumous dignity. Annie Edson Taylor was an American schoolteacher who, on her 63rd birthday, October 24, 1901, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Her motives were financial but she never made much money from her adventure.

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During the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight was feasible. In this period, the Soviet Union launched missions with passenger slots for at least 57 dogs. The number of dogs in space is smaller, as some dogs flew more than once. Most survived; the few that died were lost mostly through technical failures, according to the parameters of the test. Researching Mrs. Taylor’s life provided details that made it clear that her story was not one that fit into a conventional narrative of the determined underdog who triumphs over the challenges and obstacles placed before him or her, and emerges with admiration and rich rewards. Annie’s story was more complicated than that—and, to me, more interesting. Chris Van Allsburg PARATEXT The paths of four migrant children from different Central American countries cross as they enter Mexico, and together they continue their journey to the United States.

THE EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE — Apparently, Annie was the first to ever pull this stunt. Three men went down before (half a century before) and plunged to their deaths. Many who came after were younger, fitter and had the huge psychological advantage of knowing that it had been done before. When Chris was three years old, his family moved to a new house at the edge of Grand Rapids that was part of a development; a kind of planned neighborhood, that was still being built.The opposition is a natural one; the Falls. There are also human opponents, for example the man who refused to have any part of Annie building a suitable barrel. PLAN Annie may also have been influenced by a strong belief in an interventionist God, and in an afterlife. She may have thought that she’d put God to the test; if she was meant to live, she would. If not, that was God’s plan. Perhaps.

The Niagara Falls was used to make people plenty of money, both directly and indirectly. Below is a 1909 advertisement for a boat ride. Another advertisement shows how Niagara was used to sell hydraulic rams. it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites It has been one hundred years, and what would you think of this world? What would you make of Kardashians and sexting and the soft scatter of our lives? From this book, students can take away the lesson that everyone has dreams, ambitions and goals…even little old ladies. I assumed that this book marked a startling departure for Mr. Van Allsburg. As the man behind the gentle surrealism of Jumanji or The Polar Express, a story about a real-life sixty-two year-old stuntwoman sounded like a whole new world. Yet in his Author’s Note at the end, Van Allsburg notes that “When I decided to write about Annie, I believed I was undertaking a project quite different from the fantasies and surreal tales I’d become accustomed to creating. This was not the case. There is something decidedly fantastic and not quite real about Niagara Falls, about Annie’s adventure, and about the stories that can unfold when imagination, determination, and foolhardiness combine to set humans off in pursuit of their goals.”

A notable exception is Laika, the first dog to be sent into orbit, whose death during the 3 November, 1957 Sputnik 2 mission was expected from its outset. Soviet Space Dogs