"My Brothers' Flying Machine: Wilbur, Orville, and Me"

Title: "My Brothers' Flying Machine: Wilbur, Orville, and Me"
Author: Jane Yolen
Illustrator: Jim Burke
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2003
Genre: Biographical
Grade: 3-5

The story begins with Orville and Wilbur's sister, Katherine, telling about how when she was four, Papa brought home a little flying machine. The boys wouldn't let her play with it because she was much too small. From that moment on the boys became obsessed with flying machines. They also owned a bicycle shop and used the fact that bicycles are controlled by humans to help them establish how a plane could fly. Their first airplane was a big kite, so Wilbur and Orville had to increase the wingspan each time. They finally thought they had a plane that would work, so they left Dayton, Ohio and went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where they would have a bigger runway. After the flight at Kitty Hawk, the world was never the same.

I liked this book because I feel that often times the people who inspired and supported the famous people are overlooked. In this case, Katherine was overlooked. Katherine took care of all the cleaning and such after their mother died. I think this book does a great job showing the process that Wilbur and Orville took when designing the first airplane for that first flight. I feel like there is a lot of information in this book that students could use to know what really happened. I loved the paintings in this book. It feels like Jim Burke was there and knew exactly what the boys looked like. THe pictures of the sky look so real as well. The airplane in this book is exactly how I have always pictured it in my mind. The paintings were done in oil with some colored pencils. I also liked the Author's Note in the back of the book. It gave more information on the Wright family, especially about Katherine.

I would use this book in my classroom to teach my students about the invention of the airplane. I also could do this book as a sequence of events where my students could put the process of Orville and Wilbur's first flight in order. I could also use this in a study of people who are often overlooked since this book is more from Katherine's perspective rather than Orville or Wilbur's.