Up and Away!

Back in 1782, in Ardè che, France, lived Joseph Montgolfier, a dreamer and an inventor who was curious about how everything worked. Most of all, he wondered how kites stayed up in the sky. When one day a gust of wind blew his papers into the fireplace, he noticed that something lifted the pages into the air--and he realized that heat could make things rise. With the help of his brother, É tienne, he began to experiment and created a brand new kind of flying machine: a hot-air balloon! This beautifully illustrated picture book tells the story of how the hot-air balloon came to be, King Louis XVI's visit to see it fly, and the three animals - a hen, a duck, and a sheep - who became its very first passengers.