Sky Chasers by Emma Carroll

Magpie, an orphan living in France, finds herself involved with the famous Montgolfier family. Does that name sound familiar? More about these two brothers in a minute. Magpie is snatched off the streets by a wealthy looking woman and offered a large sum of money to steal a large red box from the attic room of a house in a wealthy district of the town. Magpie is poor and homeless. She has no idea about her father and her mother died long ago. The woman offers her a large amount of money. Magpie's only companion is a scraggy rooster that she recently rescued. So after midnight, Magpie sets off to take this red box but as she arrives at the house, a young boy emerges from the front door with a duck. Magpie stays hidden and then, when she thinks the coast is clear, she breaks into the house, finds the red box and gets ready to escape. The boy and the duck appear again, there is a scuffle and the box is dropped. Magpie is sure Madame Delacroix does not need the box so she scoops up a bunch of the papers that lie scattered on the floor and flees. 

Magpie is wrong - Madame Delacroix does want that box. She threatens to harm Coco the young rooster so Magpie heads back to the house. On the day she arrives two men brothers - Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier are conducting a test flight with a balloon. It lifts off into the air and Magpie somehow gets a hold on the rope - and suddenly she is air born. But of course what goes up must come down. After a glorious few moments of flight Magpies plummets to the ground. 

When she wakes up the Montgolfier family have taken her into their home and so she is now well and truly caught up in these historic events of 1783.

Spoiler alert - This story is so well constructed. early on we meet Magpie and her "pet" rooster called Coco and Pierre with his duck companion Voltaire. I did wonder, as I read this book, why Emma Carroll added a rooster and duck to her story but they are so essential if you know the history of hot air balloons - not a topic a knew anything about. I am certain reading this story will raise your curiosity and the curiosity of readers aged 10+. I should mention Magpie in this story is credited with seeing how hot air lifts silk but of course in history a young, black, illiterate orphan would have been given no credit for her ideas. 

19th September, 1783 - In 1783, the first hot air balloon was set to fly over the heads of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the French court in Versailles. Like monkeys in space, this odd assortment of animals was chosen to test the effects of flight. Sheep, thought to be similar to people, would show the effects of altitude on a land dweller, while ducks and roosters, which could already fly (albeit at different heights), would act as controls in the experiment. The balloon flew on a tether for 8 minutes, rising 1500 feet into the air and traveling 2 miles before being brought safely to the ground. The animals were unharmed. Columbus Aeronaughts

There used to be a competition in the UK called The Big Idea. This book comes from an idea by Neal Jackson in 2017. When Neal won the competition his story idea was presented to Emma Carroll and she developed it into this terrific fast paced story. This is a another splendid book from Chicken House. I love the cover of this book by David Litchfield. Read the first chapter here. You can hear an audio sample here - its the night of the robbery. You could use this for a book talk with your students. Here are some book reviews by young Primary school students. 

The story is structured around the rhyme which is about magpies. I read that magpies are known for stealing shiny things, such as jewellery and deceiving others. The magpie is associated with bad luck in some cultures. In the UK, this dates back to the early parts of the 16th Century.

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told.

Historical figures are woven seamlessly with the invented characters, as are imagined events with the actual, recorded fact of the balloon demonstration. Magpie is at once suspicious and accepting, grateful and wary, a good true friend, and altogether delightful. Kirkus

The hardcover edition has a different cover: