The Glorious Flight

The Glorious Flight, Across the English Channel with Louis Bleriot by Alice and Marin Provensen
1984 Caldecott Medal

I like learning about history through picture books and this one tells the story of  a real early aviator, a Frenchman by the name of Louis Bleriot, the first person to fly across the English Channel.

Told in sweet quant pictures (reminds me somehow of one of my favorite author/illustrators Barbara Cooney) and a simple text. We learn about his family . . . a wife, four children, a cat and a cockatoo; and we hear about his invented airplanes, starting at Bleriot I and ending with Bleriot XI, the one that flew across the English Channel.

I can't really imagine building airplanes,  and then flying them,  as a back yard enterprise! Sort of like if NASA was being run in a neighbors basement down the street. It's fun to think about a time when that's how things happened and a person who was inspired to figure something like that out with his own ingenuity by trail and error.