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A review by attytheresa
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois
3.0
Professor Sherman has a rather unique retirement plan: set off to balloon around the world, all by himself. He has a giant balloon made with a wicker house in lieu of a basket, studies, plans and provisions, ends teaching arithmatic to children, and on August 15, 1883, he takes off from his home town of San Francisco with little fanfare. He expects to be gone a year, letting the winds take him where they will, but at least initially across he Pacific Ocean. Three weeks later, he's pulled from the Atlantic just west of England, barely alive, surrounded by bits of wreakage and 20 deflating balloons. Once recovered, he tells his story and it is a doozy.
Most of the story involves his forced landing on Krakatoa just days after leaving the US, where he finds a most unusual, even fantastical settlement of 20 American families. It's quite imaginative and something I imagine children just adore reading about. I certainly would have, given how fascinated I was by the tale of the Swiss Family Robinson. But alas, we barely get a tour of this fantasy when Krakatoa erupts, on August 26, 1883.
This was a lot of fun, even all the fantastical inventions and plot devices woven around ballooning and the biggest volcanic eruption in history. The copy I read was heavily illustrated with ink drawings that alas, were poorly digitally transferred into my ebook, often looking like little more than black blobs of ink. Some day I'll have to leaf through a printed version to see how good they really are. Given how high quality the digitization of graphic novels and comics are, I have to knock at least a star off my rating for the poor quality.
Most of the story involves his forced landing on Krakatoa just days after leaving the US, where he finds a most unusual, even fantastical settlement of 20 American families. It's quite imaginative and something I imagine children just adore reading about. I certainly would have, given how fascinated I was by the tale of the Swiss Family Robinson. But alas, we barely get a tour of this fantasy when Krakatoa erupts, on August 26, 1883.
This was a lot of fun, even all the fantastical inventions and plot devices woven around ballooning and the biggest volcanic eruption in history. The copy I read was heavily illustrated with ink drawings that alas, were poorly digitally transferred into my ebook, often looking like little more than black blobs of ink. Some day I'll have to leaf through a printed version to see how good they really are. Given how high quality the digitization of graphic novels and comics are, I have to knock at least a star off my rating for the poor quality.