When Wilbur and Orville Wright were boys, they thought, like everyone else in their day, that the air was only for birds, balloons, and kites. One day, however, their father brought home a strange toy called a helicopter. Then the boys began to wonder.

When the boys threw the helicopter into the air, it darted and swooped about as if it were a bird. Then they became curious to find out what made this helicopter fly.

Both Wilbur and Orville were investigators—they wanted to take things apart to see how they were made. They never were content just to play with toys—they wanted to experiment with them in some way or other. As a result, their toys never lasted very long.

Like many other American boys, Wilbur and Orville never had much money when they were boys. They even collected old bones and scrap iron to earn money, most of which they spent on materials for experimenting. They loved to tinker with things, just as their Grandfather Koerner had before them. Mr. Koerner had been a wagonmaker, and a good one, too.

Of course, no one who grew up with Wilbur and Orville ever thought that they would make a flying machine. Mostly people just thought that the boys had crazy ideas about inventing things. And sometimes people had good reasons for thinking that the boys were foolish for doing some of the things that they did. One time was when the boys made a monster kite that carried Orville across a field and landed him in a tree far above the ground!

Augusta Stevenson's story about the Wright Brothers paints a clear picture of the environment in which these boy geniuses grew up. Except for their constant tinkering, their experiences were much like those of other children who grew up in the Midwest during the latter part of the last century.

Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up with a simple background characteristic of their time. Yet from this simple background, they emerged as the two men who first successfully flew a heavier-than-air machine.

Miss Stevenson is well known for the many other volumes that she has written for the Childhood of Famous Americans Series. She is noted for telling stories that children love to read—stories that are not only entertaining, but stories that bring characters to life and make them unforgettable. Her story of Wilbur and Orville Wright adds to the series an important subject of the twentieth century: two boys who conquered the air. 

From the dust jacket