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Construction trucks. School buses. Airplanes. You name it, kids can’t get enough of it. Here are a few of our favorite books of Things That Go ... Read the rest of this post

Seven Wonders: Book 3: The Tomb of Shadows, by Peter Lerangis will appeal to tweens and teens who like lots of action and danger in their stories and who are curious about ancient history.

The Children’s Book Review | May 21, 2014 The Tale of Tango By Paul E. Hohmann; Illustrated by Ivan Earl Aguilar Paperback: 24 pages Age Range: 4-8 Publisher: XLIBRIS (February 20, 2014) ISBN: 978-1493163687 What to expect: Airplanes, Pilots, Overcoming New Challenges The Tale of Tango is an illustrated story of one little plane’s life journey […]

This book will appeal to middle grade readers who like stories about inventions, airplanes, famous people, overcoming difficulties, and life in earlier times.

This Day in World History

November 22, 1935

China Clipper makes first trans-Pacific flight

Holding more than 110,000 pieces of mail, the mammoth plane that weighed more than 52,000 pounds and had a 130-foot wingspan lifted from the waters of San Francisco Bay. The plane, the China Clipper, was beginning the first flight across the Pacific Ocean on November 22, 1935—just eight years after Charles Lindbergh had flown alone across the Atlantic.

Built by the Glenn Martin Company, the China Clipper was a giant seaplane, a design well-suited to its use. The plane had to be massive to carry powerful enough engines and enough fuel to cover the vast expanse of the Pacific. The size and weight meant the plane would need a large runway, uncommon in the 1930s when aviation was just beginning. A seaplane, though, could easily land on water.

Flying across the Pacific was the brainchild of Juan Trippe, president of Pan American Airways, the leading U.S. airline at the time. Trippe knew that even the largest, most powerful plane would not be able to cross the entire Pacific in one flight. He planned to make stops at Honolulu, Midway, Guam, and Wake islands before reaching the plane’s original destination at Manila, in the Philippines. He was there—along with Postmaster General James A. Farley—to send the plane off on its initial flight. Trippe meant the name clipper to evoke the romance of the fastest merchant ships of the days of sail, the clipper ships that for decades had carried on the China trade.

Pan Am added two other planes to its trans-Pacific fleet, the Hawaii Clipper and the Philippine Clipper. Trans-Pacific passenger service was inaugurated in 1936, and that same year the first trip to China took place. Later, the Martin seaplanes were replaced by even more powerful Boeing aircraft.

“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
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these cute little airplanes are FOR SALE here:
http://etsy.com/listing/82260599/airplane-nursery-art-set-originals

they are made to coordinate with today's popular beddings. and...just because i love to decorate little boy's rooms:)

One day, this will influence her to fly airplanes….or maybe it’ll just influence her to draw her playing airplanes.

When I was a kid and my dad worked overseas, he would fly back on holidays and vacations always with a bag full of gifts in his hands. One time he came back with a toy airplane that would levitate itself a few inches off the ground. When my dad left I sat on it hard thinking it would fly me to my dad….

…it levitated no more.

My dad always wanted me to watch the Twilight Zone on television with him. I wouldn't. I had a thing about black and white TV when I was younger, and I am sorry to say that I have as yet never seen an episode. When I received the arc for The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, and The Odyssey of Flight 33 I was intrigued, and I figured that they would make fun reading. I was right.

The Odyssey of Flight 33 caught my attention first. I am always a bit nervous when I fly, and these days of ditching in the Hudson have taken the every day feeling out of boarding a plane. Everything is going according to schedule on the Trans Ocean flight. The stewardesses don't have the kind of tea that a customer wants, others are making annoying small talk. (If you've ever been on a plane, chances are you've experienced these things!) Then all of a sudden, the crew and some passengers feel acceleration. Lots of acceleration. So much so that the instruments aren't even reading the speed anymore, and there is absolutely no contact with the ground.

All of a sudden there is a flash of white light, and things seem to even out. The pilot is eager to see land and brings the plane lower to take a look. Things do not look as they should. They get in touch with Laguardia Airport and ask for permission to land at JFK. The problem is that the folks at Laguardia have not heard of JFK. It hasn't been built yet.

Will Flight 33 ever find its way back to the present?

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street is a much uglier story that encompasses some of the paranoia present in 1950s America as well as the human condition.

The neighbors on Maple Street see what they think is a meteor late on a Saturday afternoon. Shortly thereafter all power is knocked out. Batteries included. Naturally, the folks on the street are confused and a little bit frightened as well. A couple of the men decide that they should go downtown and check out what is going on when young Tommy tells them that they shouldn't go. When questioned, Tommy sites the monster movies that he has seen...aliens never want people to know what is going on.

That's all it takes...a seed of an idea. Soon neighbors are turning on one another, and in true witch hunt fashion, nobody is safe. (This also makes an excellent curriculum connection to our 7th grade study of McCarthyism).

Each of these graphic novels begins with an explanation of the television series as well as a taste Cold War America. The back matter includes information from that particular episode of The Twilight Zone as well as a background about the adaptation of the stories from screen to page.

I have to say, at first I wasn't so sure about today's kids being interested in these books. My worries were completely unfounded. Out of all of our graphic novels, these are the ones that the 6th grade boys are passing from hand to hand. As soon as Jen got them into the hands of one boy, word spread. A few of them even sat SILENTLY during an indoor recess and just read them and passed them round robin style. I know that anytime a new title in the Twilight Zone series comes in, we will no longer even have to try to sell them. Simply put them on display and they take care of themselves.

Something I failed doing while traveling earlier this fall was drawing something while waiting at the airport, this of course is an idealized version. And hey I'm getting sloppy yesterday was post number 800, but maybe I should wait until I reach post 1000 until I celebrate next time... Read the rest of this post

This makes this series complete a tad sprawling perhaps, this last one is more of an airplane.

I wonder who this guy is waiting for? Maybe he’s into Planespotting? Whatever the case, the guy in the back with the brown jacket looks pissed.

Great Airport scene from Japanese illustrator Atsushi Hara. His work is reminiscent of Miroslav Sasek and Richard Erdoes. Check out Atsushi’s portfolio for a selection of hand picked gems.

(via stickers and stuff)

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Even the Baroque sometimes is in need of modernization

My first date with my husband was a flight in a small airplane, out of a grass airstrip in Knoxville, Tennessee. Well, perhaps it wasn't a date, since my brother and sister came along, too, but in my mind, if you can remember exactly what you were wearing 28 years later (a dark blue Miss Piggy T-shirt and denim shorts) and how long you stood in the doorway of your house looking after the car that just drove away, it's a date.

Maybe that's why I like the idea of Crystal Flight, 50 airplane sculptures placed in and around Crystal City, in Arlington, Va. near National Airport. Here's a photo album of the planes in the studio before they were placed in the community. I wonder where the couple in the pink car/plane are going for their night out?

And here's one with a giant Kong hand grabbing a vintage plane. (This didn't happen on our date.)

It's a promotional site for Crystal City, of course, but at the Crystal Flight Blog, you can download a map of the 4.5 mile long flight path, which pinpoints the locations of all 50 planes. I'm going to have to go check out several of these. "Plane Jane" is apparently a black-and-white stitched riff on the Mary Jane shoe, a joke that women get, but that makes men go huh? (I wore tennis shoes on my date.)

As for the airplane sculpture named "SuperFly," please, please, please be a uber-cool, mirrored sunglasses-wearing, science-fiction reading giant housefly/F-22. According to Wikipedia, there's an opera premiering in Paris this year based on 1986 film version of The Fly. Who knew? Honey, wanna jet to France for a date?

P.S. More pictures in the photo gallery that accompanies this Air & Space magazine article.

My trip home was derailed (well, deplaned, but that seems to mean "getting off the plane" rather than the plane trip home turning into a little expedition to hades) by an extreme snowfall in Minneapolis. So the trip home took 36 hours and left me a bit out of sorts. Still, this was waiting for me when I finally got home -- snowdrops in the snow. A small perfect thing.


There's a reason why I made the magical flower in Stardust a snowdrop, after all.

My first snowdrop resolutions -- I need to get back into shape (eat sensibly; find a new trainer; go for longer, more energetic walks with dog; do some nice stretchy yoga even). This last trip left me aching all over, and I've moved up a tub in jeans sizes (long term readers of this blog may remember that there are five tubs of jeans of different sizes in my closet. If ever I have to wear the ones in the tub at the far right -- mostly bought by accident or in fits of optimism -- I'll know I've got some kind of eating disorder or wasting disease, and when I only fit into the ones at the far left I know I've been not-moving for too long. And I've moved one tub to the left. It's time to slim down a little, but mostly it's just time to get fit again after a very, very long winter.

...

I sent Newly-Stoker-Award-Winning Author Joe Hill The Graveyard Book when I finished it, because he has small sons, and I was hoping he would read to them.

(He did. They liked it. He said, "It's a great one for reading aloud. You should really hear me call for help in NightGaunt sometime," and then when I said I would like to, he e-mailed me a sound file. I was impressed.)

And he talks about the book a little on his blog -- http://joehillfiction.com/?p=163 in terms that I would use as a blurb if I hadn't said nice things about Heart Shaped Box, and would fear accusations of log-rolling.
...

My assistant Lorraine just passed this on from the conference organisers in Melbourne --


Hi Lorraine,

It's good to see all the details of Neil's trip up on the website -
now I can finally believe it's happening! I wonder if you could
arrange for there to be a link to the conference website
http://www.iceaustralia.com/cbca2008/ on the Sunday date when Neil's
keynote is open to the general public so that people will find it easy to book.

Thanks, Sian

So there's the link, and we'll put another up at WHERE'S NEIL. Come and see me talk. Come and see Shaun Tan, who is nominated for a Hugo for The Arrival, a book I tend to force people to read. (This is a link to pages from The Arrival and an essay about it on Shaun's site.)

If I hadn't been on the road I would have remembered to post something about pre-selling tickets at MIT to the first Julie Schwartz Memorial Lecture, but it looks like the pre-sold tickets are now sold, and it's now going to be tickets on the day for people in the Boston area.

05.23.08 | 7-10 PM | Kresge Auditorium

Julius Schwartz Memorial Lecture: Neil Gaiman

New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter and comics luminary Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Beowulf, Stardust) is scheduled to present the first Julius Schwartz Lecture in Kresge Auditorium at 7PM on May 23rd, 2008. Doors will open at 6PM.

Pre-Ticket Sales will occur on March 31st and April 1st in Lobby 10 from 9AM until 4PM. Tickets are $8 apiece, no limit. CASH ONLY, GENERAL ADMISSION, NO RESERVATIONS. Tickets will also be available at the door the evening of the event

Let's see.

Went to Minneapolis airport. Flew to Tokyo. Changed planes. Flew to Shanghai. Got off plane. Got bag. Walked through customs. Thought, "I ought to find out about how I get to my hotel," when I saw my name written on a sheet of paper, and someone said "You're Neil. We're science fiction volunteers. We'll get you to your hotel now." And they did. Magic. (They were Vicky and Hida, and they read this blog, although they weren't sure if I really wrote it or if I got someone to do it for me. Er, behold. It is me actually. Thank you both.)

Sleep now. Up and fly to Chengdu first thing in the morning.

Why hello there Neil Gaiman blog readers! This is the wonderful Maddy Gaiman, and I have some simply fabulous news. For the next two weeks, while my father and I are in Budapest I shall be guest blogging! Dad might add in some stuff here and there but I’m sure you are all simply jumping out of your seats in excitement knowing that you shall be reading things written by me. :P We are on the plane at the moment and have just finished eating a delicious breakfast. I had a blueberry scone, strawberry yogurt, fresh fruit, and orange juice. Tasty, tasty. Soon we shall arrive in the Amsterdam airport, where we will either go into Holland or just hang out in the Airline Lounge for our several hour stopover (I’ll report back on which was chosen), and from there proceed on to Budapest, Hungary. Why are we going to Budapest you ask yourself? Ahh... I shall tell you. It is because we are going to be hanging out on the film set of Hellboy 2, I believe. You see, my dearest father is friends with the director, (not sure how to spell his very long Mexican name), and the next thing I know we are jetting off to Europe only a week after I have gotten out of school for the summer! Crazy talk! So as I’ve said you will be hearing all (or most of at least) the updates from Budapest from yours truly. Have a magnificent day. ☺

UPDATE: Now, being in the hotel I have Internet access and can report that my father and I sat in the KLM lounge in Amsterdam airport for about 3 hours.




We just had dinner in a good sushi restaurant but I wasn’t very hungry so I didn’t eat that much... I am fully stuffed now though. Oh, and I am pretty darn tired because of the fact that I didn’t sleep on the plane and therefore my only sleep in the last 29 hours was 40 minutes in the lounge (see photo above where I am wearing dad's leather jacket because it was chilly in there), 60 minutes on the plane from Amsterdam to Budapest, and 3 hours in the hotel room before my dad woke me up to go for a little walk outside the hotel. Okay so maybe I’m not lacking sleep THAT much but I am still quite sleepy. I’m sorry this was a rather uneventful entry but it will be better tomorrow. I promise.