The Glorious Flight

This week we rowed The Glorious Flight, by Alice and Martin Provensen. Ruthie seemed to like this one a lot. The book was based on the events that led up to Louis Bleriot flying across the English channel in 1909. It was a cute book and we all learned quite a bit. I, for one, had never heard of Louis Bleriot. It took him 11 attempts to build a plane that would not only fly, but fly far enough to cross the 20 miles that make up the English Channel. In addition to learning about Louis Bleriot, we talked about Onomatopoeia and roman numerals. Ruth colored the flags of France and Great Britain (and she did say that she likes their flag better than the us flag and she wishes we could trade.). We also watched a NOVA show (A Daring Flight) about Louis Bleriot and Ruth really liked seeing the old photos of LB and his monoplane. In the show, they also interviewed the grandson of LB who was attempting to cross the channel in the same monoplane (the Bleriot XI) that his grandfather used. Unfortunately, he crashed it in the channel shortly after takeoff. It was said that Louis Bleriot's monoplane was very difficult to fly. Which leads me to the conclusion that Louis Bleriot was crazy and it was just dumb luck that he made it across the channel to begin with.