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PLANES FLY

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 10 years, 3 months ago

5 December 2013 PLANES FLY! by George Ella Lyon and Mick Wiggins, ill., Richard Jackson/Atheneum, July 2013, 40p., ISBN: 978-1-4424-5025-7 

 

"I'm leaving on a jet plane

Don't know when I'll be back again"

-- written by John Denver in 1966, it became Peter, Paul and Mary's only #1 hit

 

These days, I can pull up Kayak's website, quickly determine the best prices between a dozen airlines over a month's time, and then compare them to Southwest -- where you get two free checked bags.  I make my selection, and all that's left to do is type in my credit card number and email address.

 

It wasn’t always this simple.  While, technically, there have been short-distance commercial airline flights going back nearly one hundred years, commercial flight in the U.S. was far more focused on mail and cargo until after WWII when, in the nineteen-fifties, the refinement of jet planes ushered in the beginnings of the commercial airline industry that we take for granted today.

 

I'm not sure whether that means that I've now been around for a really long time, or the modern U.S. airline industry is a lot younger than today's young folks might imagine.

 

But what I really want to know is this: Who was the first U.S. school kid to fold up a paper airplane and send it flying across the classroom while the teacher had his or her back turned to write on the blackboard?

 

I really love the silhouettes of kids flying paper airplanes on the front endpapers of PLANES FLY!  This is followed by the cloud trail across the copyright and title pages of a prop plane that has just done three loop-the-loops.

 

There is an engaging retro style to the illustrations in PLANES FLY!  They do a great job of showing us the relatively immense size of planes compared to workers on the runway, and nicely complement the rhyming and rhythmic text that explores airplane terminology, airplane types, airplane uses, and then:

 

"Fasten your seat belt.

Stow your stuff.

Feel wheels bounce

when the runway's rough."

 

In six spreads, we are inside a jet with a couple of young twenty-first century kids who, with their parents, are experiencing a cross-country daytime-into-nighttime flight.  We get a great feel of what will be happening and what we can be doing. 

 

(It doesn't look like me, but the grownup taking the nap is me.  My own fear of flying consists of my wondering how stupid I look and sound as I sleep through several time zones.)

 

PLANES FLY! well serves our wonder and awe about those jets making lines across the sky, and our nervousness about our first airborne experiences.

 

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/

http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php

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