Something goes over, and your child stops dead in the garden — already knowing a jet from a prop before they can write their name. Seven plane books, and you pick by your child's age and by which half of the obsession you're feeding: the machine itself, or the wanting to fly.
There are two different children inside 'obsessed with airplanes,' and this shelf sorts them. Some are in it for the machine - the parts, the noises, what the thing actually is. That's Planes Go, which is engine sounds and nothing else, Amazing Airplanes, which labels every bit of the aircraft, and DK Eyewitness: Flight, which is real photographs of real aircraft and no story at all. Others are in it for the flying - the wanting, and the not being built for it. That's Flight School, where a penguin turns up determined to fly, and Violet the Pilot, where an eight-year-old builds her own aircraft out of junkyard scrap. Then there's the history, which is a separate question your child may or may not want: The Glorious Flight is Louis Blériot really crossing the English Channel in 1909, and Who Were the Wright Brothers? is a real biography of two real men. Start wherever your child already is.