Bookology Magazine

Flight

For cen­turies, humans have explored the poten­tial of flight. Leonar­do da Vinci’s note­books from the late 1480s to the mid-1490s include sev­er­al designs of wing mech­a­nisms and fly­ing machines.1 None of the designs achieved its goal, and it would be almost 300 years before humans took to the air, not with wings or machines but in hot-air bal­loons. Advances in air trav­el have con­tin­ued, and its allure has nev­er waned. Four Calde­cott Award books cel­e­brate the exhil­a­ra­tion of flight, with two jour­neys inspired by his­to­ry and two by imagination.

Hot Air Marjorie Priceman

For Hot Air: The (Most­ly) True Sto­ry of the First Hot-Air Bal­loon Ride, author-illus­tra­tor Mar­jorie Priceman’s cov­er art pre­pares read­ers for the rol­lick­ing ride ahead: the com­mand­ing hand-let­tered, dou­ble-enten­dre title; a sub­ti­tle that rolls across the image; and three pen­sive farm ani­mals about to steal the show. The sto­ry opens at the palace of Ver­sailles in France with a wit­ty, though accu­rate, account of the first suc­cess­ful flight of a hot-air bal­loon on 19 Sep­tem­ber 1783. At the demon­stra­tion are inven­tors Joseph and Éti­enne Mont­golfi­er, the French king and queen, numer­ous dig­ni­taries, and the balloon’s pas­sen­gers: the duck, sheep, and roost­er fea­tured on the cov­er. Once aloft, the “(most­ly) true sto­ry” begins.

In a near­ly word­less sequence, the ani­mals encounter sev­er­al calami­ties, includ­ing dry­ing laun­dry, a boy’s arrow, a dan­ger­ous spire, angry birds, and spout­ing foun­tain water. Ever-chang­ing page designs dri­ve the sto­ry for­ward. Among the full-bleed sin­gle- and dou­ble-page spreads, Price­man incor­po­rates two or four pan­els on some pages. Blue and gold hues, high­light­ed by reds and greens, dom­i­nate the col­or­ful spreads. Long views are inter­spersed with close-ups, along with a few dizzy­ing vis­tas look­ing down­ward from the bal­loon’s bas­ket. The “artis­tic gai­ety” of Priceman’s art is “rem­i­nis­cent of ear­li­er styles” of book illus­tra­tion.2 Expres­sion­is­tic gouache and india ink3 art­work con­veys verve and ener­gy. The ani­mals’ car­toon eyes reveal much expres­sion, from con­fu­sion to ter­ror to glee.

Marjorie Priceman Hot Air the Mostly True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride
illus­tra­tion © by Mar­jorie Price­man for Hot Air: The (Most­ly) True Sto­ry
of the First Hot-Air Bal­loon Ride, pub­lished by Anne Schwartz / Atheneum, 2005
Marjorie Priceman Hot Air the Mostly True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride
illus­tra­tion © by Mar­jorie Price­man for Hot Air: The (Most­ly) True Sto­ry
of the First Hot-Air Bal­loon Ride, pub­lished by Anne Schwartz / Atheneum, 2005
Marjorie Priceman Hot Air the Mostly True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride
illus­tra­tion © by Mar­jorie Price­man for Hot Air: The (Most­ly) True Sto­ry
of the First Hot-Air Bal­loon Ride, pub­lished by Anne Schwartz / Atheneum, 2005

Price­man con­cludes her 2006 Calde­cott Hon­or book by reas­sur­ing read­ers that, in fact, the farm­yard pas­sen­gers were tru­ly found unharmed after the eight-minute, two-mile flight. Back at the palace, “they are greet­ed with flow­ers, song, and bet­ter food than usu­al.” On a more seri­ous note, the author-illus­tra­tor includes “A Brief His­to­ry of Mont­golfiers’ Bal­loons” on the back end­pa­pers. Text and small illus­tra­tions describe the broth­ers’ curios­i­ty about smoke and their exper­i­ments send­ing con­trap­tions afloat, begin­ning with small objects in Novem­ber 1782 and end­ing with the remark­able bal­loon flight at Versailles.

endpapers for Hot Air by Marjorie Priceman
end­pa­pers for Hot Air by Mar­jorie Priceman

The Glorious FlightHot-air bal­loons and, lat­er, hydro­gen-filled air­ships drift­ed to the side­lines of avi­a­tion his­to­ry upon the inven­tion of and exper­i­men­ta­tion with glid­ers and air­planes in the late 1800s and ear­ly 1900s. Orville and Wilbur Wright’s ground­break­ing twelve-sec­ond flight of a human-car­ry­ing engine-pow­ered plane near Kit­ty Hawk, North Car­oli­na, on 17 Decem­ber 1903 spurred oth­ers around the world to improve their planes and accom­plish new feats. One of those enthu­si­asts was the deter­mined Louis Bléri­ot of Cam­brai, France, the sub­ject of Alice and Mar­tin Provensen’s 1984 Calde­cott Medal book The Glo­ri­ous Flight: Across the Chan­nel with Louis Bléri­ot.

As the sto­ry opens in 1901, read­ers meet Bléri­ot, an inven­tor of auto­mo­bile acces­sories, and his wife and five chil­dren seat­ed for­mal­ly at the din­ing room table. Lat­er, when the fam­i­ly wit­ness­es a diri­gi­ble fly­ing above the city, Papa Bléri­ot is so cap­ti­vat­ed that he devotes his efforts to cre­at­ing a fly­ing machine, the first of which he tests a few years lat­er. Its fail­ure leads to anoth­er design, then sev­er­al more, each plane shown in action or post-crash in sepia-toned acrylic and pen and ink4 paint­ings with the Provensens’ “flat, dec­o­ra­tive mod­ern tech­nique”5 in an almost naïf style. The artis­tic team infus­es humor into most of the full-bleed single‑, three-quar­ter‑, and dou­ble-page spreads, espe­cial­ly with Blériot’s less suc­cess­ful exploits. Per­spec­tives shift through­out the book to cap­ture dif­fer­ent van­tage points from land or sky. Read­ers see the pas­sage of time through the ever-present chil­dren, always prop­er­ly dressed, who grow and mature through the book.

The light­heart­ed tenor of the sto­ry takes a turn when Bléri­ot sets out to be the first per­son to fly 20 miles across the Eng­lish Chan­nel. The year is 1909, and he is ready to put his Bléri­ot XI craft to the test. The next four spreads focus on the avi­a­tor en route from Calais, France, to Dover, Eng­land. Here, grey tones cast a somber mood as he flies solo and, at times, los­es sight of water in the thick fog. When the sky light­ens, the green Eng­lish coun­try­side wel­comes the pilot as he approach­es Dover and a crowd of well-wish­ers. Despite an awk­ward land­ing, Louis Bléri­ot tri­umphs, land­ing 37 min­utes after depar­ture on this “glo­ri­ous flight.”

Alice Provensen and Martin Provensen The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Blériot
illus­tra­tion © Alice Provensen and Mar­tin Provensen from
The Glo­ri­ous Flight: Across the Chan­nel with Louis Bléri­ot, Viking, 1983
Alice Provensen and Martin Provensen The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Blériot
illus­tra­tion © Alice Provensen and Mar­tin Provensen from
The Glo­ri­ous Flight: Across the Chan­nel with Louis Bléri­ot, Viking, 1983

Author-illus­tra­tors Alice and Mar­tin Provensen met in 1943 while work­ing as ani­ma­tors at Wal­ter Lantz Stu­dio in Los Ange­les. The col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of ani­ma­tion work pre­pared them to tran­si­tion to co-cre­at­ing pic­ture books in 1947. Describ­ing their process, Alice explains, “We work togeth­er on all our illus­tra­tions, much as the medieval scribes and scriven­ers did, pass­ing the draw­ings back and forth between us, adding this or tak­ing out that, until each is sat­is­fied.”6 For Glo­ri­ous Flight, she adds, “We both worked on most of the draw­ings and paint­ings, some­times with one of us doing the back­ground and the oth­er doing the cos­tumes and fig­ures.”7 From this col­lab­o­ra­tion, the Provensens cre­at­ed a glo­ri­ous trib­ute to Louis Blériot.

Old Peter's Russian TalesLong before air trav­el became a real­i­ty, fly­ing ships cap­tured imag­i­na­tions, from con­cep­tu­al etch­ings in 16978 and 17859 to folk sto­ries. One such tale was col­lect­ed and retold by Eng­lish writer Arthur Ran­some. In 1913, Ran­some trav­eled to Rus­sia, where he taught him­self the lan­guage and researched tra­di­tion­al folk­tales. Ran­some pub­lished Old Peter’s Russ­ian Tales in 1916, not as a schol­ar­ly folk­lorist, instead “tak­ing my own way with them more or less, writ­ing them most­ly from mem­o­ry.”10 Many years lat­er, artist Uri Shule­vitz found inspi­ra­tion in the pro­tag­o­nist of “The Fool of the World and the Fly­ing Ship,” illus­trat­ing the tale in play­ful pen and brush with black and col­ored inks11 in his 1969 Calde­cott Medal-win­ning book of the same name.

The Fool of the World and The Flying Ship A Russian Tale Arthur Ransome Uri ShulevitzShulevitz’s mas­tery of page design shines through­out the book. The long sto­ry is bro­ken down into pithy para­graphs while full-bleed illus­tra­tions work around the text in imag­i­na­tive ways, with dom­i­nant images extend­ing beyond the gut­ter from the ver­so or the rec­to, hor­i­zon­tal illus­tra­tions extend­ing across the top half of the spread, and diag­o­nal or curved art­work mov­ing across a page. Two word­less dou­ble-page spreads appear at turn­ing points in the sto­ry: the ini­tial launch of the fly­ing ship with the Fool alone over a vast col­or­ful land­scape and the descent of the fly­ing ship and its joy­ful pas­sen­gers as it approach­es the Czar’s impres­sive palace. Shule­vitz val­ues white space as “emp­ty areas for the eye to rest”12 and incor­po­rates it judi­cious­ly through­out the book.

Verso and Recto and gutter in Fool of the World and the Flying Ship Uri Shulevitz
illus­tra­tion © Uri Shule­vitz from The Fool of the World and The Fly­ing Ship: A Russ­ian Tale, writ­ten by Arthur Ran­some, pub­lished by Far­rar Straus & Giroux, 1968
illustration fool of the world arthur ransome uri shulevitz
illus­tra­tion © Uri Shule­vitz from The Fool of the World and the Fly­ing Ship: A Russ­ian Tale, writ­ten by Arthur Ran­some, pub­lished by Far­rar, Straus & Giroux, 1968

The car­toon style and off-kil­ter per­spec­tives com­ple­ment the exag­ger­at­ed char­ac­ters and fan­tas­tic sit­u­a­tions. The palette of pri­ma­ry col­ors, greens, and earth tones befit both the rur­al scenes and those at the palace, breath­ing life into the folk­tale. Shule­vitz suc­ceeds in his effort to intro­duce this sto­ry to a younger audi­ence, hon­or­ing the Fool, an unlike­ly hero who “refus­es to be bound by the gen­er­al­ly accept­ed opin­ion of him­self … [and] wel­comes the var­ied com­pan­ions who even­tu­al­ly help him in his task.”13

My Friend RabbitThe unlike­ly hero of My Friend Rab­bit is the per­pe­tra­tor of a great mishap, which he attempts to rec­ti­fy with aplomb. In author-illus­tra­tor Eric Rohmann’s 2003 Calde­cott Medal book, Rabbit’s exu­ber­ance leads to his launch­ing Mouse’s new air­plane into a tree. Undaunt­ed, Rab­bit springs into action by enlist­ing a cast of ani­mal char­ac­ters to help free the plane. The images that fol­low flow like scenes in an ani­mat­ed film, with Rab­bit pulling, push­ing, or car­ry­ing one ani­mal at a time, many ridicu­lous­ly bulky and awk­ward, to an unknown des­ti­na­tion. The sto­ry reach­es the cli­max when read­ers catch up to a tee­ter­ing tow­er of ani­mals just before it collapses.

My Friend Rabbit Eric Rohmann
illus­tra­tions © copy­right Eric Rohmann from My Friend Rab­bit, Roar­ing Brook Press, 20022

Bold lines dom­i­nate the art­work, mir­ror­ing Rabbit’s resolve. Carved from a linoleum-like mate­r­i­al and hand-col­ored with water­col­ors,14 the “active and chunky and ener­getic”15 relief prints con­vey move­ment. On most spreads, tex­tured grass in hor­i­zon­tal or slight­ly diag­o­nal lines not only cre­ate a sense of sta­bil­i­ty but move read­ers’ eyes across the long framed spreads. Bro­ken curved lines trail­ing the air­plane sug­gest its pre­car­i­ous flight. Implied diag­o­nal lines, such as when the small­est ani­mals strain to reach the plane or when the heap of ani­mals glares at Rab­bit, exude ener­gy and ten­sion. The book’s most note­wor­thy ver­ti­cal line, the unsteady stack of crea­tures, is so dra­mat­ic that the ori­en­ta­tion of the book turns to its edge, slow­ing the sto­ry momen­tar­i­ly to “[make] the read­er look more close­ly.”16

My Friend Rabbit Eric Rohmann

Rohmann is an astute visu­al sto­ry­teller. With just a few remarks by Mouse dur­ing the sto­ry, the nar­ra­tive is dri­ven by the humor­ous art­work. In a car­toon style, he carves crea­tures great and small in var­i­ous states of emo­tion, from enthu­si­as­tic or bewil­dered to reluc­tant or angry. Cen­tral to the sto­ry, the red and yel­low plane is in con­trast with the pri­ma­ry palette of cool and neu­tral hues, while the back­ground col­ors change sub­tly as the dra­ma increases.

The sequen­tial nature of the sto­ry reflects Rohmann’s pas­sion for com­ic books as a boy. “Comics always awak­ened my imag­i­na­tion, drew me into the sto­ries, and sug­gest­ed fur­ther adven­tures.”17 Indeed, the author-illus­tra­tor sug­gests that fur­ther adven­tures await Mouse and Rab­bit on the final page when the two friends find them­selves in a new predica­ment with the cher­ished plane. Rab­bit repeats with dubi­ous con­vic­tion, “Not to wor­ry, Mouse, I’ve got an idea.”

illus­tra­tion of ani­mal friends © Eric Rohmann from My Friend Rab­bit, pub­lished by Roar­ing Brook Press, 2002

Tak­ing read­ers aloft, these Calde­cott Award books share sim­i­lar­i­ties, all told with a touch of humor and fea­tur­ing heroes that beat the odds. While the artis­tic styles of the illus­tra­tions are wild­ly dif­fer­ent, the pic­ture books entice read­ers with images that set the mood and pro­pel the nar­ra­tive, tak­ing read­ers onward and upward to dis­cov­er new challenges.

Books Cited

Price­man, Mar­jorie. Hot Air: The (Most­ly) True Sto­ry of the First Hot-Air Bal­loon Ride. New York: Anne Schwartz/Atheneum, 2005.

Provensen, Alice, and Mar­tin Provensen. The Glo­ri­ous Flight: Across the Chan­nel with Louis Bléri­ot. New York: Viking, 1983.

Ran­some, Arthur. The Fool of the World and the Fly­ing Ship: A Russ­ian Tale. Illus­trat­ed by Uri Shule­vitz. New York: Far­rar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

Ran­some, Arthur. Old Peter’s Russ­ian Tales. Rev. ed. Lon­don: Thomas Nel­son and Sons, 1971.

Rohmann, Eric. My Friend Rab­bit. Brook­field, CT: Roar­ing Brook Press, 2002.

Notes
  1. Christo­pher James Both­am, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci and Human Flight,” On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, 8 April 2020.
  2. Deb­o­rah Steven­son, “Mar­jorie Price­man,” Ris­ing Star, The Bul­letin of the Cen­ter for Children’s Books Online, 1 July 1999.
  3. Asso­ci­a­tion for Library Ser­vice to Chil­dren (ALSC), The New­bery & Calde­cott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Hon­or Books (Chica­go: Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, 2020), 110.
  4. ALSC, New­bery & Calde­cott Awards, 129.
  5. George James, “Mar­tin Provensen, Illus­tra­tor, Spe­cial­ist in Children’s Books,” New York Times, 30 March 1987, Late Edi­tion (East Coast).
  6. Shan­non Maugh­an, “Obit­u­ary: Alice Provensen,” Pub­lish­ers Week­ly Online, PWxyz, LLC, 1 May 2018.
  7. Leonard S. Mar­cus, “Alice Provensen and Mar­tin Provensen,” in Side by Side: Five Favorite Pic­ture-Book Teams Go to Work (New York: Walk­er & Com­pa­ny, 2001), 24.
  8. Christo­pher James Both­am, “Francesco Lana de Terz­i’s Aer­i­al Ship,” On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, 31 March 2020.
  9. “The Fly­ing Ship,” Show Me, Culture24, 6 Octo­ber 2021.
  10. Arthur Ran­some, “Note,” in Old Peter’s Russ­ian Tales, rev. ed. (Lon­don: Thomas Nel­son and Sons, 1971).
  11. ALSC, New­bery & Calde­cott Awards, 141.
  12. Julie Cum­mins, “Talk­ing with Uri Shule­vitz.” Book Links 17, no. 1 (Sep­tem­ber 1, 2007): 25.
  13. New­bery and Calde­cott Medal Books 1966 – 1975, ed. Lee King­man (Boston: Horn Book, 1975), 208.
  14. ALSC, New­bery & Calde­cott Awards, 113.
  15. “Pro­file: Eric Rohmann:Transcript,” Read­ing Rock­ets, WETA, 2025.
  16. Vic­ki Arkoff and Stephanie Gwyn Brown, “My Friend Eric Rohmann: Q&A with the 2003 Calde­cott Medal Win­ner for Illus­tra­tion,” Kite Tales, SCBWI Tri-Regions of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, 16 March 2004.
  17. Eric Rohmann, “Calde­cott Medal Accep­tance,” Horn Book Mag­a­zine 79, no. 4 (July 1, 2003): 395.
Bibliography

Arkoff, Vic­ki, and Stephanie Gwyn Brown. “My Friend Eric Rohmann: Q&A with the 2003 Calde­cott Medal Win­ner for Illus­tra­tion.” Kite Tales. SCBWI Tri-Regions of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, 16 March 2004.

Asso­ci­a­tion for Library Ser­vice to Chil­dren (ALSC). The New­bery & Calde­cott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Hon­or Books. Chica­go: Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, 2020.

Both­am, Christo­pher James. “Francesco Lana de Terz­i’s Aer­i­al Ship.” On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty. On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, 31 March 2020.

Both­am, Christo­pher James. “Leonar­do da Vin­ci and Human Flight.” On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty. On Ver­ti­cal­i­ty, 8 April 2020.

Cum­mins, Julie. “Talk­ing with Uri Shule­vitz.” Book Links 17, no. 1 (Sep­tem­ber 1, 2007): 23 – 25.

James, George. “Mar­tin Provensen, Illus­tra­tor, Spe­cial­ist in Children’s Books,” New York Times, 30 March 1987, Late Edi­tion (East Coast).

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