Word: kites
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AMERICAN SCIENCE AND INVENTION, by Mitchell Wilson (437 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $10), tells in 1,200 pictures and clear, knowledgeable text the mighty success story of U.S. gadgeteers, scientists and inventors, from Ben Franklin and his kite to the nuclear fission boys...
...Franklin, for instance, who invented the bifocal, the Franklin stove, and said all those laboriously droll things in Poor Richard's Almanac"? Not so, says the hero; it was a loyal mouse who gave Ben the big idea in every instance, and who furthermore rode the kite the day electricity was discovered...
...youngsters old enough to read for themselves. His story begins with a martial skirr in the Peking of 1922. Warlord General Wu Pei-fu is marching on the city. Christian, the son of an American doctor, and his Chinese friend Big Tiger, both twelve, venture out to fly a kite and are snatched up by two of Wu's scouts. In dutiful obedience to their captors, the boys help them capture a whole trainload of military equipment. Delighted, General Wu sends the boys home by the only safe route - a 3,000-mile detour through the Gobi Desert...
...magnificence, the film's most genuinely affecting moments are in Danny Kaye's performance in the title role. Looking a little like a Danish Walter Mitty, Comedian Kaye foregoes his familiar scat type of clowning to give a gentle, appealing and restrained characterization. Whether he flies a kite, sings to an inchworm, talks to a dog or transforms his thumb into a little girl, Kaye succeeds in conjuring up something of the charm of a child's storybook world: that magical realm of slippered kings, pouting princesses, dragons and serpents, flowers that waltz, and porcelain figures that...
...last week at the kite-shaped Good Time track in Goshen, N.Y., Bi donned his maroon-and-gold driver's colors. At 74, he reckoned he was now old enough to win the big one. He also figured that his trotter, Sharp Note, a bay colt bought as a yearling for $1,000 by Dearborn Manufacturer Clyde W. Clark, was good enough. At Santa Anita this spring, Sharp Note won two starts, and set a track record for three-year-old trotters-a 2 min. 2 4/5 sec. mile-the fastest race time posted this year...