THREE NEW children's picture books recall a journey on the Underground Railroad to a free life; the beginning of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott; and the cross-country flight of the first African-American aviator. Call them creative nonfiction for young readers.

• Phil Bildner's "The Hallelujah Flight," illustrated by John Holyfield, tells a story readers probably haven't heard before.
In 1932, stunt pilot James Banning patched up a dilapidated biplane and flew from Los Angeles to New York. He was the first licensed African-American pilot and the first African-American to complete a transcontinental flight.
Banning's flight came five years after Charles Lindbergh's nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, and included 16 stops along the way. The landings were necessary to make repairs, obtain food and fuel. Those on the ground who contributed to the mission of "The Flying Hoboes" were invited to write their names on the plane's wings, and "fly into the history books right along with us," Bildner writes.
The book uses the perspective of Banning's co-pilot and mechanic, Thomas Allen. The men were met with kindness in some places, prejudice and stormy weather in others. Whenever they landed safely after a harrowing experience, they cried, "Hallelujah!"
Bildner cites William J. Powell's "Black Aviator" and Jack Lynn's "The Hallelujah Flight" as useful in learning the facts behind his book.

• "Back of the Bus," written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to Rosa Parks' historic defiance of the South's Jim Crow laws. In this case, the "fly" is a boy sitting at the back of the bus with his mother.
He's absorbed in rolling a marble up the bus aisle and watching it return. The nice lady who works at the tailor shop, Mrs. Parks, seated at the front of the mostly empty bus, teasingly captures the marble, then winks and sends it rolling back.
Soon a lot more passengers board, and the driver orders someone to move. But nothing moves for a long time, including the bus. The boy, whose view to the front is obstructed, isn't sure what's happening, but he notices his mother has grown tense.
"Some folks look back, givin' us angry eyes," the boy tells the reader. "Same folks are doing mean scratchy whispers at someone sittin' up front. And then I see who it is ... Mrs. Parks. ... She don't belong up front like that. ... But she's sittin' right there ... like maybe she does belong up there. And I start thinkin' maybe she does too.
Finally, a policeman arrives and asks her to move. "But she don't move. She's just sittin' in that seat like a turnip pile." The boy watches as she's handcuffed and led away.
The incident stirs something new in his timid mother - "she's got Mrs. Parks' lightnin'-storm eyes now," the boy observes as the bus drives off.
His mother tries to reassure him, saying all will be forgotten the next day. "But I got somethin' in me, all pale and punchy sayin' it won't be," he confides to the reader.

• Patricia Polacco, writer and illustrator of "January's Sparrow," didn't have to look far for material. She lives in a former Underground Railroad station 12 miles from where the book's action took place in the 1840s.
The story is one that will remind area residents of the Christiana Riot.
Polacco recounts how young Sadie Crosswhite and her family, after being forced to witness the beating death of a runaway slave and hearing they were to be auctioned off, fled slavery in Kentucky and settled in the free state of Michigan.
Four years later, slave catchers, called "paddy rollers," come to town. A carved bird, made by the beaten slave January for Sadie and left behind in the rush to escape, arrives at the Crosswhite's house with a note: "I found you," striking fear in all their hearts, except maybe Sadie's.
Young readers will hope the best for the beleaguered family, so long at peace and happy. Sadie's friendship with the daughter of the town judge proves key to another escape to safety and an ending almost as happy as the reader might wish for the Crosswhites.
While bursting with large, eye-catching images that portray action and emotion equally well, this book is longer than most picture books at 95 pages. The text is considerably more complex too, making it best for children 8-12. The book is listed at $22.99.
The other two books, also lushly illustrated, are geared to primary-schoolers or 5-to-8-year-olds. They are priced at $16.99 each.
All three are hardcovers.

Jo-Ann Greene is books editor of the Sunday News. E-mail her at jgreene@lnpnews.com.