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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
In 1883 Professor William Waterman Sherman, a retired school teacher, decides to get away from it all by taking off from San Francisco in a balloon so large he thinks he won’t have to come down for a year. But it's only a few days before he crashes on the island of Krakatoa, ending his Pacific adventure. He finds an improbable Utopia with a Restaurant Government there, just before it's blown to bits by the largest volcanic eruption in history. When the professor is fished out of the Atlantic a few weeks later, he has quite a story to tell.
Re-read. I liked it as well the second time as I did the first, many years ago. It's light, frothy and fun, with lots of technical ballooning and geographical pieces stirred in. Some of these are obviously lectures, some are seamless parts of the narrative. I didn't warm to the people. And I wonder, idly, what else was in the running for the Newbery that year.
ETA: I looked, and [b:Miss Hickory|1041101|Miss Hickory|Carolyn Sherwin Bailey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1349037790s/1041101.jpg|2363956] is the only one of the Honor book from '47 I have read.
ETA: Wendy commented that Miss Hickory won in 47, and this won in 48. So I looked again, and this book won over [b:Misty of Chincoteague|17461|Misty of Chincoteague (Misty, #1)|Marguerite Henry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348751818s/17461.jpg|847402] which just goes to show that I know nothing about how books are picked for the Newbery.
ETA: I looked, and [b:Miss Hickory|1041101|Miss Hickory|Carolyn Sherwin Bailey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1349037790s/1041101.jpg|2363956] is the only one of the Honor book from '47 I have read.
ETA: Wendy commented that Miss Hickory won in 47, and this won in 48. So I looked again, and this book won over [b:Misty of Chincoteague|17461|Misty of Chincoteague (Misty, #1)|Marguerite Henry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348751818s/17461.jpg|847402] which just goes to show that I know nothing about how books are picked for the Newbery.
I guess I would give this book 3.5 stars if I could.
I owned 21 Balloons as a kid. I think my mom or something saw me reading Beverly Cleary and thought I'd like something more literary? I tried several times to read it, but I could never get into it. Part of this may be that I was 2-days-ago-years-old before I figured out it's not a collection of short stories. I may have been trying to pick up in the middle of the book, thinking it was like my readers at school?
Anyway, it was a little slow at the beginning, but the writing was well-done, the descriptions of the inventions were well-thought-out and whimsical, and I could totally consider reading this book a chapter or two at a time to an early reader. By the end of the book, I really wanted to live on the island with all the lettered families too... and I have one boy and one girl.....
It's even aged pretty well, all told. There's a line or two of oddly phrased English that comes out of a Native American in passing, and there is one mention of the use Negro, but that's it for 100+ pages. Frankly, I was surprised there wasn't more.
I owned 21 Balloons as a kid. I think my mom or something saw me reading Beverly Cleary and thought I'd like something more literary? I tried several times to read it, but I could never get into it. Part of this may be that I was 2-days-ago-years-old before I figured out it's not a collection of short stories. I may have been trying to pick up in the middle of the book, thinking it was like my readers at school?
Anyway, it was a little slow at the beginning, but the writing was well-done, the descriptions of the inventions were well-thought-out and whimsical, and I could totally consider reading this book a chapter or two at a time to an early reader. By the end of the book, I really wanted to live on the island with all the lettered families too... and I have one boy and one girl.....
It's even aged pretty well, all told. There's a line or two of oddly phrased English that comes out of a Native American in passing, and there is one mention of the use Negro, but that's it for 100+ pages. Frankly, I was surprised there wasn't more.
I have read this one before and it was still just as awesome as I remembered it!
A fun little book we read to the kids as part of school -- they really liked it!
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
[2005 review.] I grabbed this out of a display of Newbery Medal Award winners at the library because I remembered adoring it as a kid, though I couldn't remember any of the details. Luckily it's still completely awesome. Hot air balloons! Volcanoes! Secret islands! Fantastic contraptions! Restaurant government! The fact that this book was published in the '40s shows a little, though -- there's one racially problematic passage which definitely wouldn't fly today.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
No
In my opinion, one of the best things a book can do is leave me with a feeling of how smart the writing is when I'm done with it.
So this is strange review for me to write where I have to say this book is too smart. This starts as a whimsical children's book that becomes so bogged down by technical details that it becomes almost impossible to enjoy at points. I completely believe that du Bois had some ideas that probably could actually work because half his novel reads like a tech manual.
I also understand why my little cousin started the book but gave it up half way through. I'm seventeen years older than her and actually like science/engineering non-fiction and even I was skipping at points.
So this is strange review for me to write where I have to say this book is too smart. This starts as a whimsical children's book that becomes so bogged down by technical details that it becomes almost impossible to enjoy at points. I completely believe that du Bois had some ideas that probably could actually work because half his novel reads like a tech manual.
I also understand why my little cousin started the book but gave it up half way through. I'm seventeen years older than her and actually like science/engineering non-fiction and even I was skipping at points.