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Winner of the 2025 Spur Award for Best Western Children's Picture Book
Winner of the 2025 WILLA Literary Award for Best Children's Picture Book, presented by Women Writing the West
Finalist for the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Young Reader/Non-fiction/Illustrated Book
*Final rankings will be announced Nov. 1 at the annual WRMA Banquet and Award Ceremony
Winner of the Bronze Medal for Best Illustrator in the 2024 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards
Georgia Jipp might be small, but she was brave, flying 150 mercy missions for the American Red Cross during the winter of 1949.
Georgia Hoyt Jipp (1926–1987) spent her childhood in and around small airplanes in western South Dakota. She loved flying. Despite her petite size, she earned her pilot's license at age nineteen.
In 1948, at age twenty-two, she married Richard Jipp. Their wedding took place in an airplane circling above Philip, South Dakota, while wedding guests listened in on the radio.
A blizzard struck on January 2, 1949, ushering in three months of snowstorms that ranked as the worst in the state's history. Georgia answered the desperate pleas of ranchers, parents of sick children, and the American Red Cross, flying over 150 rescue missions during those three long months of snowstorms—more than anyone else in the state! She was a blizzard pilot hero.
Reviews
“Educational story about a true heroine in South Dakota history — petite pilot Georgia Hoyt Jipp, who at age 22 risked her life to aid suffering people in a devastating blizzard in 1949. Georgia knew from a young age that she wanted to be an aviator, a daring ambition at a time when few pilots were women. The winter of 1949 brought severe snowstorms to much of the West, and President Harry S. Truman ordered “Operation Snowbound,” when the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, American Red Cross, and Civil Air Patrol combined forces to clear snow and drop tons of provisions. Georgia flew more than 150 mercy missions. As the book frequently states, “She was little, but she was brave.” Wonderful illustrations by award-winning illustrator Jeanne Bowman (Spur Award winner for Charlie Russell and the Gnomes of Bull Head Lodge) and a helpful timeline of important dates in the back. — Rocky Gibbons (Roundup Magazine, Feb. 2025 issue)
“This is the kind of delightful children's book I love to read to my students. The story of a brave young pilot is both fun and inspirational and the illustrations just bring it to life. Living in the midwest I appreciate this true blizzard adventure of an unsung hero pilot. If your children or grandkids love adventure or aviation they will love this book!” — Amazon reviewer
“Brought to life with the artistry of illustrator Jeannie Bowman, author/storyteller Laura Beth Dean's picture book story about Georgia Jipp and her heroism as a rescue pilot during three months of South Dakota blizzards in 1949 is a fun and inspiring read from start to finish.” — James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review
