The story of the historic first hot-air balloon flight in 1783, told from the point of view of the duck, sheep, and rooster who were the first passengers.
Hot air balloons
Castle In The Stars
A year after his mother disappeared in her hot air balloon, Seraphin and his father receive a clue that sends them to a Bavarian castle where lurks a force that would stop at nothing to conquer the stars.
Sky Chasers
The race is on to be the first to discover the secret of flight! Magpie is soon caught up in a world of science, spies, and unruly animals to be the first to passenger in a hot air balloon.
A Dream of Flight
For fans of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, here is a charming biography of inventor and daredevil airman Alberto Santos-Dumont.
A Voyage In The Clouds
In the year and a half since the flight of the first manned balloon in 1783, an Italian has flown, a Scot has flown, a woman has flown, even a sheep has flown. But no one has flown from one country to another. John Jeffries, an Englishman, and his pilot, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, a Frenchman, want to be the first. On January 7, 1785, they set out to cross the English Channel to France in a balloon. All seemed to be going fine, until Jeffries decides the balloon looks too fat and adjusts the air valvhow hard could it be? Too bad he drops the wrench over the side of the aerial car. With no way to adjust the valve, the balloon begins to sink. Jeffries and Blanchard throw as much as they can overboard until there is nothing left, not even their clothes. Luckily, they come up with a clever (and surprising) solution that saves the day. A VOYAGE IN THE CLOUDS from Matthew Olshan and Sophie Blackall is a journey that will keep kids laughing the whole way.
Lighter Than Air
Behold the story of Sophie Blanchard, an extraordinary woman who is largely forgotten despite her claim to being the very first female pilot in history. In eighteenth-century France, “balloonomania” has fiercely gripped the nation . . . but all of the pioneering aeronauts are men.
And Away We Go!
Mr. Fox is going to the moon. Away he goes in his hot air balloon. But wait. Can Elephant come too? Sure! Let’s bring along some pizza. What about Giraffe? And Squirrel? Everyone is welcome in Mr. Fox’s balloon, but look out- a surprise is in store for everyone, too.
Sky Sailors
For more than a century before airplanes, people explored the sky in balloons. From 1783 to the early 1900s, aeronauts flew into storms, crossed large bodies of water, sailed over enemy armies, and soared to deadly altitudes. Illustrated in full color with dramatuc period artwork, here are the stories of the pioneers of human flight, such as daredevil Sophie Blanchard from Napoleon’s France, and Solmon Andree, who lead an aerial assault on the North Pole in 1897.