The Twenty-One Balloons

Title: The Twenty-One Balloons

Author: William Pene du Bois

Publisher: The Penguin Group

Place & Year of Publication: New York, 1986

Number of Pages: 180

Where You Found the Book: School Library

Story Review:

When Professor William Waterman Sherman gets tired of his teaching job in San Francisco, he plans a yearlong adventure in a hot-air balloon. He wants to spend some time to himself away from everyone, and decides that he will cross the Pacific Ocean. It seems like the perfect getaway, but after just three weeks he is found almost dead in the Atlantic Ocean, along with the remains of twenty hot-air balloons. The world is eager to know how he ended up in the wrong ocean and with so many balloons, only to have him keep it a secret. He wants his fellow explorers back at the Western American Explorers’ Club in San Francisco to be the first to know due to a code of ethics. So the world will just have to wait until he can get back to the club in San Francisco to hear his tale. But I guess I can tell you just a bit of his secret, right?

The Professor had happily been traveling for just under a week when he spotted an island with a huge mountain in the distance. He decided that he needed to gain altitude in order to clear the mountain so he threw his garbage from the past couple of days overboard. The seagulls that were in the sky dove for the food, and one brought some meat onto the top of his balloon. The birds went crazy over it and the professor ended up with a tear in his balloon. As he plummeted towards the water, he desperately tried to throw everything overboard in order to stay in the air long enough until he could reach the island. He finally detached the basket itself and hung onto the strings attached to the balloon with just enough time to reach the island.

Relieved and feeling completely alone, he jumped at the sound of a voice. It just so happened that twenty families live on this island and one person had been waiting there for him since he was spotted in the air. It turned out that the people on the island of Krakatoa were not going to let him leave, because then their secrets would be revealed to the world. During his stay on the island of Krakatoa, the Professor learns of the secrets that they don’t want the world to know about – first of all, that there is life on the island, and second of all, that the island is covered with diamond mines. As he lives on the island with these families, he becomes familiar with their way of life and culture. The title is “The Twenty-One Balloons” because of the one balloon he starts out with and the twenty he ends up with. The themes throughout the book are adventure and a little bit of suspense. How does the Professor end up in the awful situation as mentioned before? I guess you’ll have to read the book and find out!

Christian Perspective:

Although this book isn’t written from a Christian perspective, we can still learn a lot from it. Just like the Professor needed a break from his teaching job to do something he enjoyed, we sometimes need a break from our busy lives to spend time with God. Time with God is very important and we need to make sure that we use that time to deepen our faith. It is also important that we keep our promises to God just as He keeps his promises to us. In the book the Professor kept his oath to his explorer’s club even though it would have been tempting to let the story slip to some news reporter or investigator. God is loyal to us and we need to be loyal to Him, just as the Professor had loyalty. We are committed to God, and he should be the centre of our life. Another lesson I learned from the book is that you have to work together if you want to succeed. The people on the island wouldn’t have been able to survive if they hadn’t cooperated with each other. We need to learn to work with each other in a way that pleases God, and to love and respect one another in all we do and say.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book and thought it was well thought out by the author. It had a very clever story line with twists and turns along the way. This is a book that I would recommend to anyone who loves a good adventure because it’s all about exploring and traveling. This book left me wondering about what would happen next the whole time, and although it was a little slow at the beginning I still had lots of fun reading it. I chose this book because a classmate recommended it to me and it looked interesting. My overall opinion of the book is that it’s funny, well planned out, and very engaging once you get into it. I really liked this book, and I hope you will too!