Last year, my oldest son Matthew went off to college. Things at home were not as “busy” as they used to be. We still had our 15-year-old Gabriel with us, but we missed having Matthew around. My wife soon had a crazy idea.“Let's get a dog,”she told me. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea, but agreed. I mean, what’s a better way to replace a kid that has gone off to college than to get a dog?

When we got to the animal shelter, it seemed like every dog was a pit bull (比特犬). I’d had many bad experiences with pit bulls as a child, so I didn’t want to take one of them home with me. While I walked along the rows and rows of cold metal cages, a dog caught my eye. He was scared, and looked like he'd given up on life. There was only one problem: he was a pit bull.

As he looked at me with his big, beautiful eyes, I could see into his soul. I could see how scared he was and that he just wanted a happy life. I couldn’t just walk away—I had to at least go over and look at him. I approached his cage, and he just sat there, looking at me. I stuck my finger through the hole in the cage and petted him on the head. I expected him to get mad, but he didn’t. I knew that this dog had never felt love before, and he was enjoying every bit of the love I could give him in that moment. Tears began to stream down my face because I felt everything that this poor creature was feeling right then. He just wanted to be loved; he just wanted a home and a family.

It’s been a year since we took the dog home, and our lives have been changed forever. Now, his favorite thing to do is give us kisses with his giant tongue every morning. He is always there to greet us when we come home with a huge smile. He’s shown us more love than any other living creature on Earth ever had before. And every time I look into his eyes, I see love, compassion and gratitude—things I never thought that a pit bull was capable of feeling.

Louis Bleriot was a French aviator (飞行员), inventor and engineer and had become very interested in flying aircraft while he was at school. He first decided to experiment with aircraft design, after seeing a flight show at the World Fair in Paris. For about eight years he experimented with several designs and escaped from two serious air crashes with relatively minor injuries.

In 1908, a British newspaper announced that it was offering £500 in prize money for the first person to make a flight across the English Channel, before the end of that year. When 1908 passed with no serious attempt to make the flight across the Channel, the prize money was doubled to £1,000 and the offer lengthened to the end of 1909.

On 25 July 1909, Bleriot decided to make his attempt. The distance of the flight was about 45 kilometres, his speed was around 70 kilometres an hour and he flew at a height of 45 to 90 metres. He did not take a compass for direction, but followed the ship Escopette, which guided him towards Dover (in England). During the flight visibility worsened and Bleriot later said, “For more than ten minutes I was alone and lost and couldn’t see anything.” Fortunately, the clouds lifted and he was able to land his aircraft near Dover Castle, on the cliffs (悬崖).The actual contact with land was very hard. In fact, not only was the aircraft’s propeller (螺旋桨) broken, but part of the framework which carried the engine was also damaged. However, these damages were small compared to the success of the flight. Bleriot had crossed the Channel, had won the £1,000 prize and had survived uninjured.

After his success, Bleriot began his own aviation (航空/飞机制造业) company and produced 900 aircraft in the next five years. In 1927, when Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from the USA to France, Louis Bleriot was there to meet him at the airfield. They were surely two of the bravest men that ever flew an aircraft and they pioneered an industry.

When I was a kid I was a bit of a scaredy-cat. The "adventurer" in my family has always been my big brother. Still, I'm always trying to shake up the scaredy-cat inside me. And I've always known how important it is for girls to feel brave. However, girls, at large, experience so much hesitancy and a drop in confidence as they grow up.

One way to stop losing heart is to encourage a sense of adventure in girls before they are teenagers. Such adventures don't have to be big. Research from Angelia Ruskin University shows that even just going for a walk or a run outside leaves people feeling more confident and better about their bodies. After all nature doesn't care how we look. It doesn't care who our friends are or what grades we get. It is a place where we can really be ourselves.

That's why I teamed up with Amy Blackwell, the award-winning illustrator, to create a middle-grade book containing real-life women's adventures from around the world, from 2,000 years ago to today. The Girl Who Rode a Shark and Other Stories of Daring Women has been receiving star reviews in lots of places.

It is all of those amazing women that make the book a hit. While reading, they can trace the ocean-soaring flights of pilot Amelia Earhart, follow Isabella Bird's exploration up the Yangtze River and meet Kimi Werner, the freediving chef who met with a great white shark. That's why kids just can't get enough of those stories. I hope these stories can help so many kids feel confident and excited when they walk into the world.

As for me? While I still feel a little nervous to begin an adventure up a big mountain or across a frozen river, I feel I have more courage than I did as a kid. I now have a lot of role models to help me.