I was very disappointed in Lillian Elizabeth Roy's Polly Learns to Fly, especially in contrast to Betty Cavanna's Girls Can Fly, Too!.
(The Polly of Pebbly Pit books are a series written from 1914 into the 1930s. In them, Polly ages from 14 into her twenties, finds a lost gold mine (left to her by its former discoverer), convinces her parents to mine their "Rainbow Cliffs" for the fortune to be had from marketing the stones as jewels, leaves her Colorado ranch home, learns to be an interior decorator, and travels around the world. Betty Cavanna wrote a series of high-school romances in the 1940s and 50s, most on a specific theme: skiing, Japanese vs American culture, and others.)
It's evident that Roy spent an hour or two talking to a pilot or airplane mechanic, probably at Mitchell Field in Long Island, the only aviation detail mentioned by name in the book. The airplane makes are never mentioned, nor are the instruments (such as they were) described. It's not even clear if they were mono- or bi-wing. They are staying at an ENglish estate whose clover fields are "perfect for flying and for soft landing". (Um, yeah, if the landowner doesn't mind his clover clop being spoiled.) There's a lot of detail given about the need for a thorough and meticulous preflight inspection, then Polly learns to fly in about two weeks, described in one paragraph. The rest of the story is weak too: while on her first flight with Tom, who has been her suitor for the entire series, Polly suddenly realizes that she loves him, has been unfair to him, and that it's time to marry. A telegram informs Polly that her mother needs an operation, and they book passage back to the U.S. accompanied by Polly's frind Carola and the latter's guardian. Half the book is spent describing the theft and reclaiming of her Carola's jewels, and the remainder describing the wedding preparations and the plans for a honeymoon in which they will fly to South America to examine newly found Inca ruins and look for links to lost Atlantis. The latter gives Roy plenty of space to expound on what was not yet called new-age beliefs and to plug her own book on the topic (not clear whether it was intended as fiction). The earlier books in the series are much better; if the situations are outlandish, the characters and settings are much better drawn. (I have just realized that Dodo's mother, in Polly and Her Friends Abroad, is borrowed intact, with only a veneer of modernization, from Jane Austen's Mrs. Bennet.)
In contrast, Betty Cavanna obviously spent some time either learning to fly, or investigating the whole process thoroughly. Her heroine learns to fly in a Cessna (probably a 140 or 150), a few years after WWII, and she and the other boy and girl who also take lessons have to work hard at them. The whole book only takes them through their first solos. They're not deep characters, but they're not unlikely either, and while the morals may not be profound ("girls can do it too; also, don't assume people are unfriendly just because they're popular"), they're stitched into the story instead of pounded in with a sledgehammer. Also, the characters, all high-school seniors, become friends without falling in love with one another. The more I think about it, the more I like Cavanna's methods: teach girls about all the things they could do, and sweeten the lesson with a spoonful of romance (most of her books are at least nominally romances) so they'll swallow it.
Posted by dichroic at May 26, 2005 02:26 PM