Taking to the skies!
The flying machine in Linnet and the Periwinkle Flyer was inspired by Percy and Ella Pilcher’s Bat, a Victorian glider displayed at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum.
The Bat was one of several flying machines designed and made by two young pioneers of flight, brother and sister, Percy and Ella Pilcher.
Percy drew the glider designs and Ella used her sewing skills to construct its enormous wings. Then the wings were attached with piano wire to a delicate pine and bamboo structure.
Ella was the first woman in the UK to fly in a glider during their test flights.
Percy was keen to create a powered aircraft and he designed a triplane with an engine, but before he could demonstrate it, he was killed when his Hawk glider plummeted to the ground..
Percy’s death ended their dreams, but their talent and courage helped the dream of flight to come true.
Four years later, in America, in December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright would make the world’s first powered flight.
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About the book
Linnet Hill has spent her life behind convent walls, dreaming of a world of invention and possibility. When she’s sent to work in a cluttered curiosity shop, she is determined to make the most of her freedom, and to find her lost friend, Dove.
Linnet and the Periwinkle Flyer is a heartwarming, high-spirited adventure about found family, rebellion, and dreaming big in a world that wants to keep girls small.
About the author
Lindsay Littleson has four grown-up children and lives in the village of Uplawmoor near Glasgow. She was a full-time primary teacher for many years but took early retirement in 2019 to focus on her writing. Before becoming a teacher she spent eight years as possibly the worst PAYE auditor ever to be employed by the Inland Revenue.
In 2014 she began writing for children and won the Kelpies Prize for her first children’s novel The Mixed Up Summer of Lily McLean. The sequel, The Awkward Autumn of Lily McLean, was published by Floris Books in 2017 and Guardians of the Wild Unicorns came out in 2019. Guardians of the Wild Unicorns was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for both the Stockton Children’s Book Prize and East Sussex Children’s Book Prize. Secrets of the Last Merfolk was published by Floris in 2021.
In 2015 her WW1 novel Shell Hole was shortlisted for the Dundee Great War Children’s Book Prize and she enjoyed engaging in research so much that she was inspired to write another two historical books, A Pattern of Secrets, set in Victorian Paisley and The Titanic Detective Agency.
Her latest novels with Cranachan Books are The Rewilders, which was long listed for the 2022 SPARK! School Book Award and Euro Spies which came out in 2023. Linnet and the Periwinkle Flyer is her latest book, which is out in August 2025!
Time Tunnellers 