Ann Can Fly
Fred Phleger ~ Robert Lopshire ~ Random House, 1959
In keeping with the theme of Robert Lopshire from yesterday, I offer up this snapshot of 1950s stereotyped perfection.
This is a big day for Ann. Her father will take her to camp in his new airplane. Ann has never gone up in an airplane. "Will it be fun?" she asks. "Will I like it?" Her father laughs.
Will she like it? D'uh. Notice the doting look she gives her handsome father throughout the story. As he teaches her to read the air map. As he casually looks the plane over before take off. As he teaches her about gauges and wheels and whatnot. His faint smile in the eye of the storm.
Gee, isn't he proud of her? And isn't it every girl's dream to have a pops who can fly you into summer camp and land you on the lake in front of your girlfriends, all while looking so dashing? 
All kinds of awesome.
I love the angles Lopshire took in these drawings, showing the plane from so many different perspectives, giving the reader a feeling of always being above or below the action.
Really, I love this book for so many reason, it's hard to quantify. The colors. The happiness. The sky. If all father/daughter relationships were this genteel and trusting... Oh, what a wonderful world.
Also by:Red Tag Comes Back
How to Make Flibbers
A Beginner's Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes
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5 comments:
*Sigh* I was marvelously distracted by the pictures on your blog. I swear that a boy I liked in the 2nd grade had a father who looked EXACTLY like Ann's. Again, sigh! Thanks for sharing these!
Hello from Canada - Yes, I enjoyed the book too in Toronto, in the early 1960's. Thanks for sharing!
The dad looks like my dad. I miss him. Ann Can Fly and You Will Go To The Moon, and Easy Reader says, This Book Is Easy T Read!
A late 60s to early 70s young childhood was an amazing thing. Sure there was avocado-green full length shag carpet, avocado-green appliances, and other monstrosities like the Schwinn stingray with all the add-ons, but what a great time to be a kid. Bb guns, going barefoot at all possible times, trying to drown each other at the beach, drawing shit everywhere with chalk swiped from school, rock fights, and all the neighborhood stop signs said STOP WAR. Dad played with computers for a living and my uncle did rockets or something at JPL. It's been downhill ever since. Mom made noxema chicken (it actually involved mayonnaise) and we all ate around the table. Soupy sales was on the television when classical wasn't on the stereo.
Things started plummeting in the mid-70s. I'm borderline homeless now, and I'm sure my siblings aren't doing that great either. None of us have kids. I want this goddamned book. Bury it with me.
This was my favorite library book as a child. I must have checked it out many times. The image I remember best is the page where there is a strange cloud formation and the dad takes back the controls. Would be so kind as to post it?
My copy of Ann Can Fly is in my closet. The clean, crisp artwork with its limited (yet brilliant) color palette mesmerized me as a child in 1970 and still does as an adult here in the present. (Especially the scenes at sunset at the Air Motel. Bathing the entire picture in a ruddy orange was inspired!) Pretty sure Ann's father flies a Cessna 180 Sport Plane and if anyone out here makes plastic model kits, Monogram Models made a 1/41st scale model of this same plane in 1957, re-issuing it in 1994.
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