TAKING FLIGHT

Who were those daring young men in the first flying machines? Krensky (Lionel in the Summer ,1998, etc.) offers a well-researched overview of both the lives of the Wright brothers and the early development of flight worldwide, in this addition to the Ready-to-Read series, written at the third-grade reading level. He describes the early kites and gliders built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, shows the young men at work in their bicycle shop in Dayton, and details their dangerous experiments at Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills on the coast of North Carolina. Direct quotations attributed to the Wrights are all from their letters of the period, showing the author’s careful research using primary sources. Simplified explanations of a few basic aerodynamic concepts are woven into the text, and other pioneers of early flight are mentioned, including Sir George Cayley, Otto Lilienthal, and Samuel Langley, as well as Daedalus and Icarus from Greek mythology. Two minor caveats are a glaring typo (to be corrected in the next printing) and an illustration showing a cigar-smoking mechanic working on the Wrights’ first gasoline engine (a clear safety violation in today’s world, though a mechanic might not have known gasoline was flammable in 1903, when it was a new fuel). Attractive, realistic watercolor illustrations on almost every page elevate the text and recreate the miracle of early flight, with the cover showing one of the Wrights clinging to the controls and truly flying by the seat of his pants. (Nonfiction. 7-9)