People have taken dangerous risks trying to fly. Some inventors built wings for their arms and flapped them like birds. Some built balloons. Some built machines that glided with the wind. It wasn't easy, though, and it took a long time and much experimentation until people invented the airplane. Read and find out how people learned to fly.

Fran Hodgkins is the author of The Orphan Seal, winner of the Henry Bergh Children's Book Award, presented by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This is Fran Hodgkins's first Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science book. She lives in Maryland.