Alice Across America: The Story of the First Women’’s Cross-Country Road Trip

Writer Sarah Glenn Marsh and illustrator Gilbert Ford's Alice Across America is a nonfiction picture book account of maverick Alice Ramsey, the first woman to drive a car across America in 1909.

When Alice Ramsey was little, she loved to ride horses. As she grew up, more people were driving cars. From the moment Alice slid behind the wheel, she was crazy about cars. So when the Maxwell-Briscoe Company challenged her to drive one of their new cars across the country as a promotional ploy to prove that even a lady could do it, Alice daringly accepted. With several women by her side, these brazen drivers sustained many hardships over the course of a remarkable two-month journey and far surpassed all expectations.

With a clever blend of women's history, technological history, and American roading geography, this is a celebration of unstoppable women making strides in twentieth-century America.

Christy Ottaviano Books

Sarah Glenn Marsh is the author of many books for young readers, including A Campfire Tail, Selfie Sebastian, and The Big Girl: Maria Merian’s Scientific Vision. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and their menagerie: four rescued sighthounds, a bird, and many fish.

Gilbert Ford holds a BFA in illustration from Pratt Institute and an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author-illustrator of How the Cookie Crumbled and The Marvelous Thing That Came from a Spring, which is a Best STEM Book of the year, and has illustrated many New York Times-bestselling middle grade jackets, as well as the award-winning picture book Mr. Ferris and His Wheel. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.