THE TWENTY-ONE BALLOONS

Have you heard of this? I hadn’t (or of its author, William Pene du Bois), but it won the Newbery in 1948. Unfortunately, it was also the first book we’ve read for book club that I’ve actively disliked. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it much as a kid, either. It’s the story of a retired schoolteacher who decides to travel around the world in a giant balloon and ends up on the secretly-inhabited island of Krakatoa shortly before the volcano erupts—so far, so good, right? I’d expected a fun, exotic, bigger-than-life, pseudo-Victorian adventure tale a la Jules Verne, but although the essential elements were interesting, the execution fell flat. In the hands of someone like Roald Dahl, I think the premise could have led to a rip-roaring story, but du Bois’s writing didn’t do his ideas justice. To me, it seemed like the kind of children’s book someone would write if they didn’t have children, didn’t know any children, and didn’t remember being a child: plenty of bizarre and nonsensical goings-on, but nothing substantial to bind them together—no narrative arc, no character development, and oddly, none of the humor or whimsy that make masters like Dahl so awesome. Most of the book is devoted to earnest anthropological discussions of the semi-utopian Krakatoan society and dry, detailed technical explanations of various inventions (and if there is anything I have absolutely no patience for reading, it’s lengthy descriptions of mechanical and spatial concepts). I was mildly diverted while reading it, but every time I set it down I really didn’t have any urge to pick it up again. I kept wondering if standards for children’s literature were really so different in 1948—what did reviewers of the time see in it to praise it so highly? No one in my book group seemed too thrilled by it either. But a quick check of Amazon revealed that there are still plenty of contemporary readers (children as well as adults, presumably) who love it, because it has a near-perfect five-star rating. So I’m just going to conclude that this is not the type of book for me and leave it at that.