Dave Dashaway, the Young Aviator

It's 1913, and the sky is new. Twelve-year-old Dave Dashaway has had enough of his miserly guardian's cramped rules and empty pockets, so he does what any red-blooded boy with dreams would do: he runs. Fate lands him in the path of a daring airman who sees something special in the skinny kid with wild eyes. What follows is a breathless apprenticeship in the most terrifying, glorious technology of the age, the airplane. These aren't the planes of today; these are rickety contraptions of wood and wire that spit propeller oil and sometimes just fall apart mid-flight. Dave doesn't just learn to fly. He learns to crave the horizon. For every kid who ever looked up at a passing plane and wondered what it would feel like to be the one at the controls, this is a time machine to a moment when taking to the air was still a act of reckless courage.