FEATHERS, FLAPS, AND FLOPS

In this terrific salute to those who fulfilled that eternal human urge to take to the skies, Zaunders skips the Wright Brothers and Earhart in favor of some lesser-known pioneers of the air. There’s the Montgolfier brothers, who invented the hot-air balloon in the 18th century and flew in it for Louis XVI; Alberto Santos-Dumont, whose European aircraft was called the Infuriated Grasshopper in 1906; and Beryl Markham, who flew “west with the night” from Abingdon, England, to Newfoundland. Readers learn from the introduction that John Damian, an Italian in 16th-century Scotland, tried to fly with wings made of chicken feathers, and that Cal Rogers, who flew across the US first, named his plane the Vin Fiz after the grape drink of the company that sponsored him. The prose is as lively and spirited as the characters—what child won’t be enchanted by the story of Wrong-Way Corrigan?—and Munro’s energetic and spiffily detailed images are just right. (Collective biography. 8-12)