by William Pène du Bois
[Still reading children's books. Why we have them around is covered in this review. Short version: children's reading program, public schools.] Oddly I'd read about this book before I realized there was a copy lying around here. In the book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883 (li...
3.5 starsThis was both entertaining and delightful to read. Very much along the lines of a Jules Verne novel with fantastical inventions and miraculous escapes from crashing balloons and exploding volcanoes. I was especially fascinated by the community on the island and how they'd established a pe...
This book reminds me of a bad version of Pixar's Up.
Read with 7 year old daughter. Loved this book when I was a kid; it really made me think.
This summer I decided to read three different Newbery titles. The first was The Giver by Lois Lowry. The second was The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois.Professor William Waterman Sherman has taught children for many years. He tires of it after several decades and takes up ballooning inst...
This summer I decided to read three different Newbery titles. The first was The Giver by Lois Lowry. The second was The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois.Professor William Waterman Sherman has taught children for many years. He tires of it after several decades and takes up ballooning inst...
This is another book I was pre-reading for my son and the humor took me by surprise. The story is of a San Francisco man in the late 1800's who decides to retire from teaching math to adolescent boys and take a vacation. He wants a vacation that has no destination and he doesn't want to be bothered ...
This was a fun book to read with 6 year old Max. The vocabulary was probably more suited for a 12 or 13 year old, so I got to answer about 3 questions per paragraph, but he really grasped the story and loved it.I really enjoyed it too! It has a lot of complex topics - the desire to explore and escap...
What a peculiar story! William Sherman, tired of teaching ungrateful children, decides to travel around the world in a hot air balloon. Sherman succeeds, but not in the way he'd anticipated. Unexpectedly, Sherman crashes on the island of Krakatoa. Instead of finding a deserted island, however, he co...