The Twenty-One Balloons

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois is a book from our Sonlight Core C curriculum, and I will say I was pleasantly surprised by this classic and my kids loved it!

This book is an adventure classic that is historical fiction. The story is loosely based on a real expedition of Professor William Waterman Sherman and his plan to spend a year traveling in a hot air balloon house.

The beginning of the story is a little slow and leaves you scratching your head a little as Professor Sherman is found floating in the Atlantic by the Captain of the freighter S.S. Cunningham and Professor Sherman refuses to tell his story to anyone but the Western American Explorers' Club. He is fussed over as he recovers his physical strength from his travels and is rushed from New York City to San Francisco as soon as he is able so that the story of his incredible adventure can be heard as the whole country of the United States of America want to know his story. 

Once Professor Sherman is set up at the Western American Explorers' Club, the whole crowd listens with bated breath as he tells his story. He tells about his balloon house and his adventure on the island of Krakatoa.

This story is fun and extremely fascinating! It gives you a view of a different area of the world, but also the battle of human nature that is found when living on an island together. There are so many great talking points with the kids as we discussed including taking risks, greed, being a good neighbor and working together. You also learn many fun and interesting things about technology in the late 1800s as well as world events during that time.

I highly recommend reading this as a family read-aloud. My children enjoyed this book very much as well, especially my oldest who is eleven.

I would give this book four stars because of the slow start that left me wanting for a chapter or two.

Reading Challenges:
For the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge I'm using this book as my 20th Century Classic.

For the Tim Challies 2020 Reading Challenge I'm using this book as a book that is of no particular interest to you in the committed section of the challenge. I'm using it for this category because I honestly had no interest in reading it when I saw it, but I'm so glad it was part of our curriculum!