John P. Crotty
I thought that finding information about paper airplanes was going to be easy. A friend lent me a modem. I subscribed to GEnie, General Electric Company’s online service. Paper airplane facts were going to be at my fingertips. Wrong. All I could retrieve was “file not found.”
Next, I went to Yale’s Sterling Library. One of the perks of participating in the Teachers Institute is they give you a Yale library card. Not only did the card catalogue contain no entries on paper airplanes, but also the research librarian broke out laughing when I asked her under what else paper airplanes might be filed. She was then embarrassed when I convinced her that forty-year olds in business suits could be serious about paper airplanes.
I fared no better at Yale’s Engineering Library. The person on duty, who was not the regular librarian, looked at me with disdain when I asked him if they had any books on paper airplanes. I then showed him one of my son’s books,
Whitewings
written by Dr. Yasuaki Ninomiya. The man’s tone changed, “Ah yes, distinguished Japanese doctor, very good,” but still no books on paper airplanes.
My eleven-year-old son, Kasey, and I then visited my parents in Washington D.C.. While there, we visited the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. And yes, we finally found books on paper airplanes. Closer to home, Walden Books stocks paper airplane books.
Kasey made and tested all the airplanes listed in this unit. We had fun working together. It was a nice and different way to spend time with my son. He came to the seminar meeting with me and demonstrated his planes. He took Dr. Wegener’s challenge to build a plane that could fly across the room personally.
Kasey has seen the difficulty I have had writing this unit. He has kept after me to complete the unit. He commented to my wife, “Is it this hard getting me to do my compositions?” Seventh grade is going to be interesting.
On a topic totally unrelated to paper airplanes, but consistent with my philosophy of child development, may I please recommend books written by Lloyd Alexander. The books are loosely based on Welsh legends. They are exciting and written for boys. The tone of the books is that it is more noble to be an assistant pig-keeper than to be a war hero. Kasey and I had a good time reading and we are still enjoying discussing the series.
