by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 10, 2010

It's a sequel to "I Dream of Trains" - sort of. In 2007, Author Angela Johnson teamed with illustrator Loren Long for a second book based on American history. A boy visits his great-great uncle, and remembers "His whole life all he ever wanted to do was fly." And he'd finally gotten his chance - as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II.

But Angela Johnson focuses "Wind Flyers" on the fun of flying - and the story of the men in the planes. When "Uncle" was seven, he'd jumped from a barn window just to land in a pile of hay. And when he was 11 he'd paid a barnstorming pilot to take him up for a ride. The soft clouds seemed welcoming, and he'd known how it felt to fly "beyond the wind."  He cried when the flight was over - because he'd wanted that thrill again. Loren Long even draws the boy sitting up on the roof of the barn, watching wistfully as the barnstormer flies off into peach-colored clouds.

"There was magic in the wind back then..."

But soon Johnson's character finds his way into a story from U.S. history. "Air Force didn't want us at first," Uncle remembers - as Long draws a row of African-American pilots. Johnson provides the historical context in a note at the back of the book. "In January of 1941, under pressure from the NAACP and other groups, the U.S. Army Air Force created the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron... the army had no intention of ever using them in battle. [But] under pressure from the Roosevelt administration the 99th was finally posted in North Africa in 1943."

The Tuskegee Airmen were famous for breaking barriers in the military, and Johnson's story matches the legend to a warm and human face. "We were something," uncle remembers.  "...we never lost a plane we protected." He'd finally become a wind flyer, flying high in the sky.  But as the story ends, he's an old man remembering, and Long supplies a picture of a darkened barn with a cropduster in its shadows.

Flying is different now, Uncle says philosophically, but the clouds are still just as welcoming. And once in a while, the boy and the uncle still take joyrides in to the sky in that cropduster. "Flying into the wind, against the wind, beyond the wind..."

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