Born To Fly by Michael Ferrari
Review by Chris Singer
About the author:
Michael Ferrari lives in Ohio, where he is a writer and a teacher.
BORN TO FLY won the Delacorte Yearling Prize for a first middle grade novel. Mr. Ferrari got the idea for BORN TO FLY at a WWII airshow, when he overheard a boy telling his little sister that girls could never be fighter pilots. He wrote the story for her, and his daughters.
About the book:
Born to Fly tells the story of eleven-year-old tomboy Bird McGill. Ever since she can remember, Bird has loved flying in small propeller airplanes with her mechanic dad. When the local airstrip is turned into a military flight school, Bird is in heaven. But when a young Japanese American student named Kenji Fujita joins Bird’s class, the entire school seems to be convinced that he’s a spy, or at the very least, that he and his uncle want the Japanese to win. Bird is wary of Kenji, not just because he’s Japanese, but because he steals her flight-related topic for a school report and leaves her to write about the deadly boring local marsh weed. But on Bird’s first trip to the marsh, she and Kenji accidentally discover real spy activity in the area. Bird realizes that Kenji is actually a stand-up guy—and she and Kenji begin an adventure that will shake the town and may even change the future of the United States.
My take on the book:
This is another in a string of fantastic middle reader novels I've come across recently. I picked up Born To Fly one evening after my daughter went to bed. After reading Ferrari's fantastic opening few lines: "Just 'cause I was a girl in 1941, don't think I was some sissy. Shoot, I saw stuff that would've made that bully Farley Peck pee right through his pants," I didn't put the book down until I finished it.
Born To Fly is what I would call a "Girls Can Be Heroes Too" book. Of course, I loved this and readers, especially middle-grade girls, will enjoy this story as well. Girls will definitely identify with the character of Bird, but middle-grade boys will also enjoy this fast-moving book because it has lots of action and suspense.
With all of these great qualities going for it already, Ferrari really scores with the valuable messages and themes expressed in the story. The historical context of WWII and racism against Japanese-Americans at that time provides an incredible backdrop for the story. The themes of sexism (Bird is a girl who wants to fly planes), racism (Kenji is called names like "Jap" and is automatically a suspect when some of the book's events take place), bullying (Both Kenji and Bird are bullied for being "different") and loss (Bird's father's plane gets shot down) are very relatable for middle-grade readers and will provide classroom teacher's with lots to opportunities for excellent discussion.
I loved the author's note at the back of the book where Michael Ferrari explains how a young girl in his classroom wanted to read an action-adventure story with a girl hero. He couldn't find any such book so instead he wrote one, proving to me at least that writers and teachers are definitely heroes as well.
