Captain Arsenio: Inventions and (Mis)adventures in Flight

by Pablo Bernasconi, Pablo Bernasconi (Illustrator)

Overview

Captain Arsenio was a curious man who liked, more than anything, to tinker and explore. One day in 1782, he decided that he would put his unusual skills to work in a most ambitious way: he would build a flying machine.

Despite a hodgepodge of materials (and a total unawareness of the laws of physics), Captain Arsenio aimed to get his feet off the ground and his head in the clouds—temporarily, at least. But would any of his crazy inventions ever achieve flight?

In this hilarious fictional account, Pablo Bernasconi imagines a legend in the making—a retired cheesemaker and scuba diver turned inventor who sets off to fly with the birds, in spite of himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618507498
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/28/2005
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.12(d)
Lexile:	AD920L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Pablo Bernasconi is an award-winning graphic designer who was born in Buenos Aires. Pablo loves things that grow: puppies, trees, hair, knowledge, children, clouds, and pumpkins! His artwork has been published in picture books, magazines, and newspapers all over the world. He lives in Patagonia, Argentina--still a wild place where nature can often over-rule humans' attempts to control it.

Editorial Reviews

"The collage artwork, which incorporates mostly metallic found objects such as springs and spoked wheels, features the determined but hapless adventurer rising and crashing in one spectacular disaster after another. Undaunted, he continues to proclaim that his next attempt “cannot fail.” Rube Goldberg fanciers may be intrigued by these attempts and might even be inspired to sketch some of their own alternatives." School Library Journal

"Bernasconi's aviation spoof is hard to categorize but well worth a look." -- Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

According to this droll mock-biography, whimsically set in the 1780s, would-be aviator Captain Arsenio "had little knowledge of physics or mechanics,... he demonstrated great patience and determination" in his quest for flight. Mixed-media collages picture Arsenio with an egg-shaped head and toothy underbite, dressed in a thin leather helmet, slack gray coat and patched olive-drab pants; his sepia-inked sketchbook mimics Leonardo da Vinci's. The narration alternates between a deadpan retrospective voice ("He placed so much emphasis on getting off the ground that he forgot... how to keep himself in the air") and excerpts from Arsenio's gung-ho Flight Diary: "Running + wings = access to heaven. It cannot fail!" The book recalls six doomed experiments; from the Motocanary ("If I concentrate enough birds together, the sustaining force will help me win the clouds. It cannot fail!") to the wooden, hydrogen-powered Aerial Submarine ("I'm still climbing upward, but I can smell something burning"). Argentinian author-artist Bernasconi, a pilot himself, creates multi-stage diagrams to document Arsenio's flights, from takeoff to ascent to maximum height and crash-landing. The reiterated "It cannot fail!" and slapstick outcomes yield a cumulative hilarity, and the Captain's quixotic optimism is endearingly loony. Bernasconi's aviation spoof is hard to categorize but well worth a look. Ages 6-up. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 3-5--Bernasconi documents the exploits of an imaginary 18th-century experimental aviator, Captain Arsenio, explaining that the book's diagrams and quotations have been extracted from the inventor's diary. Six failed attempts to fly are described, including such innovations as the bird-powered Motocanary and the highly combustible Aerial Submarine. Each contraption is introduced with a brief paragraph of text, a large illustration, and a quotation. On the following spread, in a "Flight Diary," Arsenio details step by step how he operates that particular machine, becomes briefly airborne, and then inevitably falls to the ground. The collage artwork, which incorporates mostly metallic found objects such as springs and spoked wheels, features the determined but hapless adventurer rising and crashing in one spectacular disaster after another. Undaunted, he continues to proclaim that his next attempt "cannot fail." Rube Goldberg fanciers may be intrigued by these attempts and might even be inspired to sketch some of their own alternatives. However, for most readers, the repetitive crash-landing humor most likely will fall as flat as Arsenio's flights.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University, Mankato Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Drawing from the pages of a recently "discovered" journal, Bernasconi chronicles the uniformly disastrous experiments of forgotten aviation pioneer Manuel J. Arsenio, an 18th-century Patagonian who, though he had "little knowledge of physics or mechanics and had access only to useless materials," turned to flight after failing at cheese making, scuba diving and other ventures. Repeated exclamations of "It cannot fail!" notwithstanding, each of Arsenio's Da Vinci-esque inventions-six of which, from the "Corkscrewpterus," to the "Hamstertronic," Bernasconi depicts in detailed collages made from gears, belts, wires and other, mostly metal, found materials-stay intact just long enough to set the hapless captain up for a long fall. Resembling Humpty Dumpty with a pointy nose and a serious underbite, Arsenio cuts a decidedly comic figure, but by the end, his unflagging optimism will have won at least some reader sympathy, and if, as Bernasconi suggests, his journal was found on the Moon, perhaps in the end he did achieve his dream. (Picture book. 7-9)

Kirkus Reviews