Review - Angela's Airplane

Angela's Airplane
by Robert Munsch
illustrated by Michael Martchenko
Date: 1988
Publisher: Annick Press
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 24
Format: e-book
Source: library

While looking for her lost father at the airport, Angela ends up in the cockpit of a plane. She decides to push just one button, and then another ... and another ...

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is definitely not a favourite. I don't remember reading this one before, and reading it in a post-9/11 world (and especially at a time when certain Boeing jets are falling out of the sky), I felt rather uncomfortable.

Here we have the story of five-year-old Angela who goes to the airport with her father. She promptly loses him. In the process of seeking him out, she wanders onto an airplane. Of course, being five years old, she loves to push buttons. So she pushes one. And then another. And then another. Soon she's up in the air, and the air traffic controllers have to talk her down. This leads to the most unrealistic plane crash ever, with Angela sitting in the midst of the broken plane without a scratch on her. Her father makes her promise to never fly another airplane. Then she goes and breaks that promise by growing up to become a pilot.

I'm just not sure what the point of this one is supposed to be. It's not like the events depicted could ever happen, so the unrealistic way Angela gets the plane in the air doesn't really bother me. The crash does. It's either going to scare kids (because the book makes it look like landing is a very precarious procedure) or give them an unrealistic idea of what'll happen if they're ever in a crash. If the plane is in tiny pieces all around you, it's highly unlikely you're going to walk away without a scratch. (Not that I wanted to see the kid carted off in an ambulance, either. I just don't think this part of the story works, and I don't know if there's a way that it could be made to work.)

The repetition and amusing illustrations that we see in other Munsch/Martchenko collaborations are there, but I just wasn't feeling this one. Oh, well. Maybe the next book I read from this team will be better.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.33 out of 5