To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers

To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers

by Wendie C. Old

illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker

This week, I've been lucky enough to look at TWO nonfiction picture books about famous pioneers of flight! This book, about the Wright brothers, is much different than the one about Amelia Earhart because its content spans a much longer period of time (the Earhart book only described one night in her life, the night of her trans-Atlantic flight), and contains much more text. This book would be much too wordy for primary elementary students, but it would certainly fascinate 4th and 5th graders. Even intermediate elementary students might have to read it over a few sittings, not just in one. It even has a table of contents that make the aspects of the Wright brothers' journey, in chronological order, more manageable and organized.

The watercolor illustrations were very interesting because the illustrator also clearly outlined in black pen, and made features on faces and bodies very scraggly and unclear. This technique reminded me very much of a Christmas picture book about mice that I used to read, but I can't remember it's title for the life of me. It was exciting to me that I was reminded of this book immediately when I turned to the first page, even if I can't remember it's name! The illustrator paints in mostly light, but bright colors that remind me of dawn and morning, while his characters are darker and more shadowy.

The author clearly did expansive research on this topic. He packed every page with detail about the Wright brothers and has clearly become an expert on them. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about their personal lives, like that their parents challenged all their children to think for themselves, and that they did not have a typical brother relationship. They challenged each other, bounced ideas off of one another, and loved arguing, not maliciously, but for the sport of it. I was surprised to hear that "The Wright brothers did not dress in the work clothes of the islanders. They always wore business suits. And they never flew on Sundays." They wore work clothes in the bicycle shop but wouldn't on the beach in the sand and dirt while experimenting?! How odd! The author exhibits a great combination of research and style when he adds vivid details like "once a package arrived [to their nieces and nephews] with a dried horseshoe crab, bottles of salty seawater, and fine seashore sand," and "Wilbur kept crashing into the ground. Sand got in his mouth and eyes and hair."

The epilogue at the end of the story highlights how, out of all the inventors at the time searching for a solution to making man fly, Orville and Wilbur Wright were the ones to do it. The author emphasizes the power of two: it was the combination of Wilbur's social skills and innovativeness and Orville's optimism that led them to victory.

The back pages include a "Flight Timeline" and book suggestions to read further, both of which would be useful and interesting to young readers.

http://www.wright-house.com/wright-brothers/Wrights.html