Paper Airplane: A Lesson for Flying Outside the Box - Hardcover

McMillan, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743256298 ISBN 13: 9780743256292

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Synopsis

An inspirational fable about the importance of thinking creatively and independently follows the story of a sixth-grade teacher who arranges a paper airplane competition, one student's trust in the original thinking of a classmate, and the class clown's winning idea.

About this title

About the Author

Michael McMillan has a well-deserved reputation for creative thinking and delivering innovative results. Shortly after college, Michael founded a visual communications firm that soon attracted an international client list that read like the Who's Who of Business. Fortune 500 corporations, small entrepreneurial businesses, sports and music legends, non-profit organizations, educators, and institutions have sought Michael's creative input, expertise and guidance to deliver effective branding, imaging and visual communications solutions with award-winning results.

In addition to corporate clients, his creative direction on Michael Jordan's New York Times best-selling pictorial autobiography, Rare Air, served to establish a new standard and niche in retail publishing. Michael followed this success with several more award-winning coffee-table books including Mario Andretti, The NBA at 50 and John Deere's Genuine Values.

After twenty successful years, Michael decided to sell his firm and pursue new challenges, such as public speaking, writing, directing and several other areas of interest. In addition to Paper Airplane: A Lesson for Flying Outside the Box, Michael has collaborated with Mac Anderson, founder of Successories and Simple Truths, to create a gift book, The Race, based on a poem stressing the importance of never giving up.

Michael also worked with Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz to produce Johnny the Bagger: The Simple Truths of Service, a moving book relating the importance of customer service that comes from the heart. Within the first three months of its release, the online video Michael created to promote the book has been watched by over two million viewers.

Most recently, Michael coauthored The Power of Teamwork with former Blue Angels pilot, Scott Beare. This compelling book explores the essence of teamwork and reinforces eleven key principles embraced by the Blue Angels.

Michael McMillan's breadth of knowledge and experience, combined with his story-telling ability, connects with audiences of all ages, leaving them both motivated and committed to embrace a future of endless possibilities.

Reviews

McMillan's story of a boy's mind-changing event in sixth grade contains a plot twist intended to promote "alternative thinking," otherwise known by that more familiar phrase, "thinking outside of the box." McMillan, a graphic designer who self-designed this 8"×8" tale of two boys given a class assignment to build paper airplanes, obviously intends it for both adults and children, with enough visual stimulation-wild 'n' crazy type; photos and illustrations bleeding off the page-to keep the narrative moving along at a quick clip and enough pop business psychology to keep corporate types interested. A page of type flying through white lines against a pale blue background works well to illustrate the aerodynamic principles of flying, while at the same time demonstrating the forward movement of the story. But the following page, showing how "Tom" (the narrator) picks "Jeff" (the rebellious alternative thinker hero of the tale) to be his partner in paper-airplane building, fails to capture the complex (and less aerodynamic) social interactions of the classroom. McMillan himself admits in a short introduction that "the information about aerodynamics + flying is somewhat limited," which is a pity, given the format's possibilities, and which makes the final result a letdown, since Jeff's solution to the assignment could easily be construed as due to a slightly obnoxious laziness, instead of a truly da Vincian assessment of the world around us.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743256298
• ISBN 13: 9780743256292
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 72