Literature / How I Learned to Fly

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The Goosebumps book that's not really a Goosebumps book.

Jack Johnson is tired of constantly being shown up by his frenemy Wilson Schlame, and both of them are constantly competing for the attention of Mia Montez, the cutest girl in their class. One day after a humiliating experience at Mia's birthday party, Jack finds a book with instructions on how to fly, along with a questionable magic dough to eat. Finally, something Wilson can't do! Unfortunately, not only can Wilson fly too, but soon enough, the burden of having a superpower catches up to the boys.

It is one of the nineteen original series books that was not adapted into the 1995 TV series.

The book provides examples of:

• The Ace: Wilson is ridiculously good at everything, and he never misses a chance to make sure Jack knows it, even mastering the power of flight faster than him.
• Alliterative Name: Our protagonist is named Jack Johnson, and his love interest is named Mia Montez.
• Backhanded Apology: Wilson gives Jack one of these before the race:
  Wilson: This is it. I'm really sorry, Jackie.
  Jack: Sorry for what?
  Wilson: Sorry to have to beat you in front of two billion people!
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When he's flying for the first time, Jack returns to his house just as his parents arrive. He tries to land in the backyard to avoid being seen, but his father announces that he saw something. It turns out that he thought he spotted a condor.
  • The second time that Jack flies and arrives back home, he can hear his father mentioning that he's searched everywhere and doesn't know where else to look. It turns out that he was actually talking about looking for a client that has actual talent.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Jack and Wilson both read a spell book titled Flying Lessons and consume a homemade dough from said book that gives people the power of flight. They become reluctant celebrities as a result, and quickly regret it.
• Bowdlerise: The 2018 eBook alters Jack's story about a past client of his dad's, removing references to her being "crazy" and "a real nut".
• Cat Up a Tree: One of Jack's neighbors announces that her kitten is stuck up a tree. This prompts Jack and Wilson to race up the tree to try and get it to impress Mia. Jack almost grabs the cat, but he ends up falling and landing in the arms of Wilson, much to his embarrassment. He's humiliated even more when Wilson is the one who ends up saving the kitten.
• Celebrity is Overrated: Jack and Wilson both learn this moral the hard way, not having any time or privacy to themselves after they become famous for their powers of flight.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: While playing Twister at the birthday party, Jack has to stretch his legs unusually wide to get to a spot on the cloth. This causes his shorts to rip open, exposing his Superman boxers. The rest of the guests explode with laughter (including Mia, who shrieks like a maniac), and Jack almost rushes out of the house because of this, had Mia not convinced him to stay (which turns out to be only for a brief moment).
• Competition Freak: Wilson takes every chance he can get to show up Jack and win Mia's love. The plot of the book is kicked off when he insists on having a flying race with Jack, exposing their abilities to the world.
• Covers Always Lie: The back cover blurb summary heavily implies that the magic mixture Jack uses to make himself fly was either cursed or had some sort of supernatural consequence, but the problems he faces are more based in reality.
• Didn't Think This Through: During his second flight around California, Jack ends up landing far from Malibu and encounters a pair of police officers. He asks them for a ride home, but when they start asking him questions and tell him to get in the car, Jack realizes that this was a bad decision and flies away, much to the astonishment of the officers.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Jack is about to eat a hot dog, Wilson decides to show him up by eating a foot-long hot dog instead.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: At the climax, during a huge televised flying race, Jack pretends to lose the ability to fly so he can finally retreat from the spotlight and spend time with Mia, while Wilson is forced to move to another school while spending the rest of his life with the heavy burden of fame.
• Floorboard Failure: While Jack is exploring the desolate Dorsey house, the wooden floor underneath him gives way, sending him falling down to the basement. Thankfully, because the floor down there is soft and spongy from the dampness, Jack isn't injured.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Despite the implications that the flying formula has supernatural powers and origins, this story has no traditional horror elements or monsters. It's instead scary in a real-world sense; a story about the price of fame and competition, showing how any kind of talent is often exploited by the greedy (Jack's talent agent father puts him in cheesy car commercials when he learns that he can fly, while Jack's rival Wilson has his own TV show), how celebrities can be "trapped" because of the constant media attention and obsessed fans, and the government wanting to know the secrets of the Applied Phlebotinum for the good of the country (allegedly). It plays out more like a supernatural satire on the burden of celebrity and society's obsession with success and being famous. Even the usual twist ending is a positive one.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Rather than any supernatural threat, the "villains" are regular people who won't let Jack and Wilson live their own lives now that they're famous.
• Jaw Drop:
  • The police officers who offer Jack a ride home on the freeway react this way when he suddenly takes off, jumping out of their car in shock.
  • The same thing happens to Mr. Grossman, the coach in charge of the race Wilson puts together in front of the school, who looks at them both, utterly speechless.
• Lighter and Softer: This book doesn't have any monsters, villains, or scary plot twists. In fact, it takes a break from horror altogether.
• Mundanger: The book teaches the readers that fear isn't always found with ghosts, monsters, vampires, aliens, or freaky creatures. It can be found in people who want to exploit others, obsessive fans who hound celebrities, and government agents who want people for scientific study.
• Never Recycle a Building: The place where Jack hides after Mia's party is the Dorsey house. It used to be one of the most beautiful beach houses in Malibu, but it's been an abandoned wreck for years. The house's interior is filled with forgotten belongings, one of which is the book that teaches Jack how to fly.
• Parental Neglect: Jack's parents love him, but they refuse to notice how miserable they're making his life after they find out he can fly, using up all his time to film commercials, and won't even let him leave the house unless he's wearing the cheesy superhero costume that he wears for said commercials.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: While doing the exercises listed in Flying Lessons that teach people to fly, Jack encounters one that involves some incredibly difficult flexibility. He gets stuck in a position that leaves his left foot on his right shoulder and his right leg tucked behind his head, and as he's struggling to get out of this awkward pose, his friends Ethan and Ray come by.
  Ray: What. Are. You. Doing?
• Puppy Love: A rare instance of a love triangle (between Jack, Wilson and Mia) that features prominently in the story. Jack wins after he pretends to lose his flying powers, leaving victor Wilson overwhelmed by the fame of being "the boy who can fly" and being forced to leave town, giving Jack the chance to win Mia's love.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: This is enforced throughout the book after Jack reveals that he can fly. While the military has some practical ideas for it (albeit through harsh questioning and training) Jack's father uses what could be a potential boon to mankind to film cheesy commercials, and Wilson gains said power solely to one-up Jack some more. The book that even gave the boys their flying powers in the first place, Flying Lessons, is utterly forgotten once everyone outside their rivalry for Mia's love gets involved, with no evidence that either boy still has it.
• Riddle for the Ages: Flying Lessons, the book that teaches humans to fly through unusual gymnastics and a magic recipe, is a total enigma. Though it's implied to have some supernatural properties and origins, we never learn who wrote it, why it was in the Dorsey house, and who owned it last. We also have no idea where it ended up after Jack and Wilson become flying celebrities, so none of the questions above could possibly be answered.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Wilson humiliates him one too many times at Mia's birthday party, Jack runs out of her house in frustration.
• Smug Snake: Wilson. Every one of his appearances has him upstaging Jack and rubbing his superiority in Jack's face. He gets hit with some major karma in the last chapter, where he's stuck as a flying celebrity and unable to regain the normal life he and Jack had before.
• Stunned Silence: To announce to the world that he and Jack can fly, Wilson asks school coach Mr. Grossman to organize a race between the two boys in front of the Malibu High School student body. After they perform, everyone else present doesn't clap or cheer at all, just giving them shocked, slack-jawed gapes.
• Swarm of Rats: The basement of the Dorsey house is filled with a sea of rats, which the horrified Jack finds after getting the book on flying. He's fortunately able to fend them off and escape with the book.
• Tempting Fate: When Mia invites Jack to go rollerblading over the phone, Jack is interested because he can rollerblade better than Wilson. She then tells him that Wilson got a new pair and is doing great with them, leaving a disappointed Jack declining the offer.
• Throwing the Fight: When he's challenged to one last, nationally-televised race against Wilson, Jack suddenly plummets from the sky. It's assumed that he simply lost the power to fly... but he actually never did. He knew that faking the loss of his power would cause people to stop paying attention to him, leaving their eyes locked on Wilson, who is forced to move away with the burden of being famous while Jack gets to return to his normal life, along with winning Mia's heart.
• Training from Hell: After revealing to the world that he can fly, Jack is forced to go through this by the military. They put him under intense questioning, make him do plenty of gymnastics, and force him to perform plenty of dizzying maneuvers while flying. By the time he's done with the whole thing, his father mentions that the whole procedure took 10 hours, and he didn't expect it to go that long. This presumably happens to Wilson as well, and after Jack pretends to have lost the ability to fly, the government continues to experiment and test Wilson instead.
• The Triple: Flying Lessons mentions that the ability for human flight involves three things: the daring to try, an imagination that soars, and a good mixing bowl.
• Valentine's Day Episode: This book can be considered an example, since it happens to be one of the few in the series that is focused extensively on romance. A portion of it is even set during Mia's (the object of Jack and Wilson's affection) birthday, appropriately on Valentine's Day.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: As Jack demonstrates his flying powers to Mia, he's shocked to see Wilson soaring behind him, so much so that he involuntarily stops flying and slams headfirst into a tree trunk.
• You Are Not Ready: After doing all the odd gymnastics and eating the weird dough, Jack turns the next page in Flying Lessons and finds a passage telling him that he's about to embark on a glorious adventure, asking if he's ready for it. Jack answers yes repeatedly, but sees that the passage reads, "You are wrong. You are not ready. Turn the page." The next page reveals that he simply has to empty the enrichening powder in an accompanying envelope into the mixture.