The nine - member Mice family makes baskets for merchant D. Rat, who pays them so little that they never have enough money for food. To earn extra money, the mice decide to enter the Flying Circus contest. So, with the help of two brothers from the Aero Club (named Orville and Wilbur, of course), the mice create a flying basket. As the contestants perform, the villain appears Baron von Rathoven, whose flying dart "had a nasty habit of crashing into other aircraft." The flying basket performs wonderfully, but it is attacked by the Rat Baron who nearly destroys it but instead lands in a muddy pond after failing to down the mice. The Baron is revealed to be D. Rat, of course. All ends well (of course): the mice win first prize. An entertaining, if predictable, plot that never soars quite as high as the characters in their flying basket. Pastel illustrations of the diligent mice building their creation and action-filled flight sequences outshine the text by miles.