To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers by Wendie C. Old

When I was younger, my parents took my brother and I to Kitty Hawk to visit the very location of the Wright brothers' first flight.  In the field where they flew, the museum has set up stone tablets in the ground to commemorate the distances and the duration, the longest being 59 seconds, of the first few flights.  I remember running down this historic runway by my brother with our arms outspread as if we were the very airplane that the Wright brothers first flew.  My brother and I shared a lot of laughs that day.  Whenever I hear about the Wright brothers, I now think of that happy memory with my family.  When I came across this book about the Wright brothers in the library,  I was very excited to read it and to learn more about these two incredibly smart men.

However, the entire book was a disappointment.  I do admit that the facts in the book were fascinating; I did learn more about the Wright brothers than I had known before.  The author even included a bibliography and notes about her information to show the reliability of her story.  It is the story of the Wright brothers from when they were small dreaming of flying to when they fulfill their dreams at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  But unfortunately, the actual writing of the book was very stuffy; much of the writing was if a child had written it in short choppy sentences without much variation.  Since teachers are trying to improve children's writing and trying to expand their word usage, reading something like this would not be beneficial to either the student or the teacher.

Even the pictures did not fit with the story.  They had aspects of abstraction with hard ink lines that seemed contrary to the idea of flight.  Overall, I felt that the pictures really did not contribute to the actual text.  I will admit, though, that the last picture of the Wright brothers' plane in the corner surrounded by blue sky was a beautiful picture that fit excellently with the story.  The hard ink lines had vanished, and the soft lines of paint showed the success and the beauty of flight.  Sadly, this is not enough to turn my opinion.  Despite, the fascinating facts about the Wright brothers and their flight, I really would not recommend this book.  I am sure there are plenty of good books out there discussing the Wright brothers; this is really not one of them.