Kara Smith
When I initially chose The Flying Girl by L. Frank Baum I predicted that the book would likely be about a girl who learns how to fly a plane at a time when that was not a common occurrence. I believed the book would express some hints of early feminism by combating gender norms of the early 20th century. A few words I predicted I would see commonly used included “she”, “Fly”, “stop” and “girl”. The initial screenshot I took on Voyant showed me that some of the main characters were Orissa, Steve and Mr. Burthon. It showed me that there was a lot of dialog throughout this book due to how often the word said was repeated. It also confirmed my idea that this book would be about an airplane. After using some of the other tools, including bubbles, knots and veliza, I found that they can either give you some insight to the book or none at all. Bubbles was able to show how often words show up, alluding to some context clues, as well as when words became less frequently used and went away.The knots tool was not very valuable when looking for information about the book. It was difficult to understand what the knots should represent and therefore did not give any real insight on what this book could be about. Lastly, the veliza tool seemed to be successful in giving an insight into topics covered in this book. It allowed you to take quotes from the text and put it into a chat. By doing this you are able to see some of the context covered in the book and decide if that sparks your interest to read more about the book.
