Happy #NationalAviationDay. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned the anniversary of Orville Wright’s birthday into this U.S. National Holiday.
This year, I’m celebrating this annual event with a book list for young readers.
Inspiring True Stories in Aeronautics
- A DREAM OF FLIGHT: Alberto Santos-Dumont’s Race Around the Eiffel Tower by Jef Polivka, illus. Rob Polivka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019)
- THE FEARLESS FLIGHTS OF HAZEL YING LEE by Julie Leung, illus. Julie Kwon (Little Brown, 2021)
- Fearless Flyer: Ruth Law and Her Flying Machine by Heather Lang, illus. Raul Colon (Calkins Creek, 2016)
- FLYING FREE: How Bessie Coleman’s Dreams Took Flight by Karyn Parsons, illus. R. Gregory Christie (Little Brown, 2020)
- THE FLYING GIRL: How Aide de Costa Learned to Soar by Margarita Engle, illus. Sara Palacios (Atheneum, 2018) NOTE: Also published in Spanish as La joven aviadora
- FLYING MACHINES: How the Wright Brothers Soared (Science Comics) by Alison Wilgus, illus. Molly Brooks (First Second, 2017)
- THE STORY OF THE WRIGHT BROTHERS: A Biography for New Readers by Annette Whipple (Rockridge Press, 2020)
- UP & DOWN: The Adventures of John Jeffries, First American to Fly by Don Brown (Charlesbridge, 2018)
- WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane by Kirsten W. Larson, illus. Tracy Subisak (Calkins Creek, 2020)
Airplane Books
- DK: The Big Book of Airplanes (DK, 2016)
- JUMBO: The Making of the Boeing 747 by Chris Gall (Roaring Brook, 2020)
- MACHINES IN MOTION: The Amazing History of Transportation by Tom Jackson, illus. Chris Mould (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Kirsten W. Larson 