Captain Arsenio: Inventions and (Mis)adventures in Flight Book

Captain Arsenio was a curious man who liked, more than anything, to tinker and explore. One day in 1782, he decided that he would put his unusual skills to work in a most ambitious way: he would build a flying machine.

Despite a hodgepodge of materials (and a total unawareness of the laws of physics), Captain Arsenio aimed to get his feet off the ground and his head in the clouds—temporarily, at least. But would any of his crazy inventions ever achieve flight?

In this hilarious fictional account, Pablo Bernasconi imagines a legend in the making—a retired cheesemaker and scuba diver turned inventor who sets off to fly with the birds, in spite of himself.

Publishers Weekly

According to this droll mock-biography, whimsically set in the 1780s, would-be aviator Captain Arsenio "had little knowledge of physics or mechanics,... he demonstrated great patience and determination" in his quest for flight. Mixed-media collages picture Arsenio with an egg-shaped head and toothy underbite, dressed in a thin leather helmet, slack gray coat and patched olive-drab pants; his sepia-inked sketchbook mimics Leonardo da Vinci's. The narration alternates between a deadpan retrospective voice ("He placed so much emphasis on getting off the ground that he forgot... how to keep himself in the air") and excerpts from Arsenio's gung-ho Flight Diary: "Running + wings = access to heaven. It cannot fail!" The book recalls six doomed experiments; from the Motocanary ("If I concentrate enough birds together, the sustaining force will help me win the clouds. It cannot fail!") to the wooden, hydrogen-powered Aerial Submarine ("I'm still climbing upward, but I can smell something burning"). Argentinian author-artist Bernasconi, a pilot himself, creates multi-stage diagrams to document Arsenio's flights, from takeoff to ascent to maximum height and crash-landing. The reiterated "It cannot fail!" and slapstick outcomes yield a cumulative hilarity, and the Captain's quixotic optimism is endearingly loony. Bernasconi's aviation spoof is hard to categorize but well worth a look. Ages 6-up. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.