BOOK REVIEW: The Twenty-One Balloons

TITLE: The Twenty-One Balloons
AUTHOR: William Pène du Bois
PUBLISHER: Puffin
DATE OF PUBLICATION: May 6, 1986 (first published 1947)
FORMAT: Paperback, 192 pages
GENRE: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0140320970
SYNOPSIS FROM GOODREADS:

Professor William Waterman Sherman just wants to be alone. So he decides to take a year off and spend it crossing the Pacific Ocean in a hot-air balloon the likes of which no one has ever seen. But when he is found after just three weeks floating in the Atlantic among the wreckage of twenty hot-air balloons, naturally, the world is eager to know what happened. How did he end up with so many balloons . . . and in the wrong ocean?

MY REVIEW:

I read this book aloud to my daughters. It is the winner of the 1948 Newbery Medal.

We loved it! What a great adventure story! It is about a man who yearns for a peaceful, solitary sojourn in his hot air balloon, only to end up on an inhabited but undiscovered island called Krakatoa.

The book is very entertaining, and we loved the "way of life" on the island of Krakatoa. The author has a great imagination!

MY RATING: 4 stars!

This book qualifies as:
#20 for my 2011 100+ Reading Challenge
#2 for my 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up