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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, may be used as a minor mook.

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 can make books fly with the power of his Devil Fruit, the Book-Book Fruit. By having a book hover over someone's head, Mont-d'Or can trap that person in an illusion based on the book's story. He can also use his flying books as footholds to survey a battlefield and attack from the air with a rifle.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 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.

    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.
  • 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 
  • 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 PC 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 
  • Aria's Story has sapient books as the main NPCs, and they get around by floating and flying with their page-wings.
  • 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 which fly horizontally across the screen, as well as more which come towards you from the background, as obstacles.
  • Castlevania:
  • 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 versions of the video game have flying book present as enemies (they try to ram you out of certain platforms) and others serving as platforms.

    Webcomics 
  • Axe Cop at one point features an evil flying book, who turns out to be a robot.

    Western Animation 
  • 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 catlike 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 gives 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 Story of Santa Claus has the somewhat-anthropomorphic flying book of Nostros, the wizard.

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