Captain Arsenio: Inventions and (Mis)adventures in Flight

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)