Whether by magic or by haunting, books are many times portrayed as being able to fly. This is usually done by the book flapping its pages like the wings of a bird. If in a video game, flying books may be used as a type of minor mook or perhaps platforms that the player character hops from book to book on.
See also Books That Bite.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Doraemon: In one episode, by using the 'Hypnotizing Megaphone', Nobita and Suneo make their comic books take on the characteristics of birds, specifically those of swans, so that the books can fly away from being dumped by their owners' mothers. Cue all the books flying south and just not coming back even when their owners want them to, as swans are migratory birds and the time is winter.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: The Book of Darkness can hover around from one place to another on its own. Subverted and Played for Laughs in the Movie a la Carte manga, where it's revealed that the book is actually being held up by an invisible Reinforce Eins (who trips at one point).
- One Piece: Charlotte Mont-d'Or is an officer of the Big Mom Pirates who ate the Buku Buku no Mii (Book-Book Fruit), a Paramecia type Devil Fruit that grants him the ability to manipulate books. One of the abilities that he can utilize is flying around by standing on top of two flying books, which allows him to survey a battlefield and attack from the air with a rifle.
Fan Works
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Lexi's home car features several of these as part of the library theming, in homage to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.
- Unova Undertakings:
- In "The Nightmare," five books float off the shelves and into the hands of Hilda, Jermaine, and Rosa while they're exploring the Strange House.
- In "The Library," books fly off the shelves and float around in the eponymous library.
Films — Live-Action
- Army of Darkness: One of the false Necronomicons does this, trying to bite Ash all the while.
- Ghostbusters (1984): The haunted library has books moving themselves from shelf to shelf by levitation.
- MirrorMask: Books will hover back to the library of their own accord if they feel rejected. This is used to effect a quick escape, by choosing large books and standing on them. However first one needs to make them rejected by criticising the book's quality.
Literature
- Discworld: The Librarian of Unseen University makes it perfectly clear that if you want to consult the books on flying and levitation spells, you've got to catch them first. He will lend you the very long stepladders, however, as they're generally to be found flying around in the roofspace somewhere. In Sourcery, all the books in the library fly away to another tower, though this is mostly out of self-preservation so that they won't be destroyed by the Sourceror. Rincewind expresses regret that he didn't get to see that.
- The Magicians: The Brakebills School of Magical Pedagogy has a library infested with these things, courtesy of an Awesome, but Impractical sorting system; quite apart from making it difficult to find anything, it also produces a ridiculous amount of wear and tear on the spines.
Live-Action TV
- Odd Squad: The primary threat of the episode "Dawn of the Read", who were brought to life by a villain known as Frieda Fiver.
- Power Rangers Mystic Force: In "The Light", Nercolai finds a magical book called the Book of Prophecy, which tells the future. However, the book also has a mind of its own and flies away from Necrolai by flapping its pages like wings. In the end of "Hard Heads", it goes to Leelee to let her see her future.
- Todd and the Book of Pure Evil: The titular book makes its exit at the end of almost every episode by flapping off down the high school's corridors.
Pinball
- Ghostbusters: There are flying books in the library. Your task, when you reach the area, is to eliminate them.
Tabletop Games
- Call of Cthulhu supplement Dreamlands, adventure "The Land of Lost Dreams": While in the title place, a Player Character may be hit on the back of the head by one of a flock of flying books. It's a book he had a chance to read but didn't, and had been trying to find again ever since.
- Dungeons & Dragons adventure OA7 Test of the Samurai: When the magical Book of Hsi is activated it flaps its pages and flies around.
- Magic: The Gathering: Idle Thoughts
depicts a group of flying books soaring on their open pages above a barren landscape.
Video Games
- Alan Wake: In the DLC copies of Alan's books replace the raven swarms from the first game.
- Aria's Story has sapient books as the main NPCs, and they get around by floating and flying with their page-wings.
- Baldur's Gate III: One of the Wyrmway trials features a flying book that is key to solving the quest.
- Banjo-Kazooie: Cheato, the big book of cheat codes, hovers in place while flapping his pages.
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Dantalions are demons who inhabit books, and they can float themselves out of bookshelves and float then fly at the player characters, wielding blades held in some demonic hand or mouth projection from the open tome.
- Bram Stoker's Dracula: In the Sega CD game, Dracula's castle's library has books that fly horizontally across the screen, as well as more that come towards you from the background, as obstacles.
- Castlevania:
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: The haunted castle setting has a library with hostile flying books.
- Super Castlevania IV has these in the Library level as well, as Floating Platforms.
- Drawn Dark Flight: The library chapter has books flying around, and one of the puzzles involves catching some of them with a butterfly net.
- Epic Mickey has a level in the Lonesome Manor, where, as an extra mission, Mickey can chase down flying books and spray them with paint, gumming up their pages and making them fall out of the sky so they can be collected.
- Eternal Darkness: One of the Sanity effects in the Roivas mansion involves books in the library flying between the shelves.
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game: "Book bats" are minor mooks in the library level. It also has golems made from books, and the levitating books from the movie appear, too.
- Harry Potter: Some earlier games have flying books presented as enemies (they try to ram you out of certain platforms) and others serving as platforms.
- Mario Party DS: In the boss fight with Kamek in his library, the player rides on top of a magical, floating book (which the player can stand on since Bowser shrunk them to a tiny size). The player also has to deal with other magic books, which fly by flapping like birds and attack the player.
- NieR: The Grimoires can fly.
- Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?: The "High Tome Forest" stage has a few flying books as rather weak foes, easily dying to either a swipe or a hip-pound.
- RuneScape: Flying books can be found in Daemonheim as minions of the feared libraromancer Lexicus Runewright.
- Secret of Mana has animated books that flutter around. They also flip their pages to cast spells.
- Super Mario 64 has a few of these show up in the original Big Boo's Haunt.
- Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil features flying books as enemies in stage four, which takes place inside a gigantic magic library.
- Twisted-Wonderland: There are several floating books in NRC library.
- Wild ARMs 1: There are several enemies of this type.
Webcomics
- Axe Cop at one point features an evil flying book, who turns out to be a robot.
- Nixvir: During their duel, the Wicked Witch of the North Pole summons these to try and kill Erik. The snowman knight instead shreds their pages with his sword, although not without feeling a sense of regret.
Western Animation
- Arthur: One Cold Opening has Prunella encounter these in a setting based on the Harry Potter series.
- Atomic Betty: One of the show’s villains, the Scribe, is a failed author who found a magic book and magic quill pen. The book is big enough that the Scribe can stand on it, and he can make the book fly through the air while he rides on top of it.
- Darkwing Duck: In "Whirled History", when Gosalyn falls asleep while doing her homework, she dreams of her history book growing and riding it throughout history with a scifi character called AstroDuck (who looks exactly like Honker).
Gosalyn: We're in history?AstroDuck: Well, where else would a flying history book take you?
- The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is about a man who discovers an entire library of flying books, and becomes their friend and guardian.
- Little Einsteins: The characters encounter these in the Laurentian Library in Florence.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", two distinct examples are present:
- As the Tantabus moves between ponies' dreams, it turns objects that they like into monsters to make the dreams nightmares and feed on the resulting fear. In Twilight's dream, who, being the bibliophile that she is, is dreaming about reading, it turns her books into leathery-winged book-bats to attack her. Notably, unlike most examples, these don't use their covers as wings — rather, they sprout bat-like wings from their sides and use those to fly.
- Later, when the ponies are fighting the Tantabus in their collective dream by using lucid dreaming to give themselves powers and tools, Twilight recreates her old library house and animates its contents to create a cloud of flying books with which to swarm the Tantabus. These ones fly in the more traditional manner, by flapping their pages and covers.
- The Owl House: Flying books can be seen in the Bonesborough Library's Forbidden Stacks in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins".
- The Story of Santa Claus has the somewhat anthropomorphic flying book of Nostros, the wizard.
- Teen Titans (2003): In "Fractured", the small, fifth-dimensional Fanboy, Larry, comes to the third dimension to visit the Titans and starts playing in their tower. At one point, the little imp stands on one of Raven’s magic books, which apparently floats in mid-air under its own power, and rides it through the air like a surfboard. Irritated, Raven tells him "The Book of Azar is NOT a toy."
