Book Review: Aeroplane Boys on a Cattle Ranch by John Luther Langworthy
Construction on the new high school is going slowly, so classes won’t start for another two months. Don’t worry, cousins Frank and Andy Bird will not be bored. It seems the two young aviators have been invited to spend their extra vacation with Andy’s maternal uncle, Jethro Witherspoon, down on his Arizona ranch. So they pack up their flying machine and it’s off to the sunny Southwest!
The flying’s fine near the desert, despite a couple of attempts by the Bird boys’ old nemesis, Percy Carberry, to put an end to the fun. The boys get to meet real live cowboys, participate in a bear hunt, and cap it off by using their aeroplane to track down a kidnapper!
This is the fifth in the Aeroplane Boys series (also printed as the Bird Boys series,) and the oldest of the air adventure books I’ve reviewed at publication date 1914. It’s pretty standard stuff for children’s literature of the time, with our heroes being gallant young men (Frank cooler-headed than Andy) who excite the admiration of all good people with their piloting skills. Percy Carberry gets no dialogue, but is behind the scenes of ineffectual attempts to wreck our heroes’ plane. As was also standard for the time, Percy has more money than sense from an indulgent parent, but can’t buy competence.
The writing’s decent, and there are exciting bits. It really is fascinating to imagine one of the fragile aircraft of the time desperately searching the desert for a fugitive and his tiny captive. Parents should be aware that there’s some period ethnic prejudice (against Mexicans) and racism (against Native Americans) in the story towards the conclusion.
One interesting thing in hindsight is that our high school aged cousins undoubtedly graduated just in time to fly in World War One–had the series continued.
At least one of the earlier volumes is on Project Gutenberg, for fans of early aviation. (In the back of this volume, I see there was also a Girl Aviators series; go, suffragettes!)
