Air Service Boys Flying for Victory Or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold

Charles Amory BeachProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
258K words
Chapters
26

Tags

English Originals War and Military FictionChildren's Literature Military AdventureMilitary StrategyAviationBoy HeroPatriotismAerial CombatPopular NarrativeWorld War I

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Air Service Boys Flying for Victory; Or, Bombing the Last German StrongholdAuthor: Beach, Charles Amory,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jul 7, 2008

Editor's review

This is a typical early juvenile aviation adventure novel, its title stating the main line: a group of Air Service Boys carry out a mission late in the war to bomb the last German stronghold. Its value lies less in complex literary technique than in preserving how early twentieth-century popular juvenile fiction imagined flight, courage, and teamwork. The pacing is brisk, missions advance clearly, and comrades' trust anchors the relationships, all bearing a strong mark of their era. Readers can enjoy the plain appeal of early aviation fiction and also treat it as a sample of the values in British and American juvenile reading during World War I. Note that its depictions of war and the enemy reflect simplifications specific to its historical context and are best read with historical awareness today. It suits light reading in the original English or study of the genre features of public-domain juvenile adventure fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to get a feel for the pacing, then decide whether to continue.
  2. Mark aviation and military terms as you go and look them up together after finishing the chapter.
  3. Read alongside background on World War I aviation history to understand the period context.
  4. For English practice, summarize the main mission in two or three sentences after each chapter.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? The language is generally popular narrative prose, but it includes aviation, military, and period terms that still pose a hurdle for beginners. A middle-level reading foundation is advisable, or read one chapter first to assess difficulty; a dictionary and background material will make reading smoother.
Are the war depictions suitable for young readers? The work is aimed at young readers and violence is usually restrained, but it carries clear period stances and simplifications. Parents or teachers can add historical background to help young readers distinguish fictional narrative from real history.
How should I understand this ebook's version information? The book is released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. The date in the metadata relates to the electronic release, not the work's original publication year, and should not be mistaken for when the work was first published.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Charles Amory Beach Author

Charles Amory Beach is not a real person but a collective pen name used by the American Stratemeyer Syndicate for its "Air Service Boys" series of novels published between 1918 and 1920. The series recounts the adventures of American teenage pilots during World War I. Five titles are held here, including Air Service Boys Flying for Victory, Air Service Boys over the Atlantic, and Air Service Boys in the Big Battle, with plots centering on aerial combat, bombing missions, transatlantic flights, and reconnaissance against enemy spies. Aimed at young readers, the books are notable for their tense mission plots and aviation detail, reflecting how American juvenile popular fiction of the period imagined and depicted the air war. Beyond the pen name's attribution and the series titles, public information on the actual authors and their lives is limited.