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albatrossonhalfpointe 's review for:
The Twenty-One Balloons
by William Pène du Bois
I first encountered this book when my grade five, I think, teacher read it to us in class. I remembered it fondly, and thought I'd re-visit it. Many of the things I enjoyed about it then I still did now; specifically, the notion of living apart from regular society, surrounded by fantastic inventions made possible by unlimited funds and a less rigourous set of physics than we live with in reality. The idea of the society based on restaurants like that also sounded appealing. It's also interesting, when you're dealing with an explosion of this magnitude, that left pretty much nothing behind, to imagine what might have been there before. Because any evidence that might have been there would have been utterly obliterated, an author is free to imagine anything, and that's fun.
In terms of writing, it's very simplistic, as kids books of that era almost inevitably are, and littered with a selection of the offensive attitudes of the times towards women and people of any heritage other than European Caucasian. That aspect is unfortunate, but standard in books of that time period, and I've certainly read much worse.
Ultimately, it was cute, and a nice, quick, fluffy read on a day that is too damn hot for anything else.
In terms of writing, it's very simplistic, as kids books of that era almost inevitably are, and littered with a selection of the offensive attitudes of the times towards women and people of any heritage other than European Caucasian. That aspect is unfortunate, but standard in books of that time period, and I've certainly read much worse.
Ultimately, it was cute, and a nice, quick, fluffy read on a day that is too damn hot for anything else.