The Twenty-one Balloons by William Pène du Bois
**Overview of *The Twenty-one Balloons* by William Pène du Bois**
*The Twenty-one Balloons* is an adventurous children’s novel that follows Professor William Waterman Sherman, who embarks on a journey from San Francisco in a balloon. His voyage takes an unexpected turn when a seagull punctures the balloon, leading him to a deserted island named Krakatoa, where he discovers a utopian society founded by American families lured by the riches of diamond mines. The island’s inhabitants embrace an innovative "Gourmet Government," ensuring cultural diversity through their food offerings, with each family representing a different cuisine.
As he explores the island, Sherman experiences both the marvels of its inventions and the challenges posed by frequent volcanic activity. The narrative combines elements of science fiction and adventure, reflecting the optimistic belief in human ingenuity and technology reminiscent of works by Jules Verne. However, the peaceful life on Krakatoa is abruptly ended when the volcano erupts, prompting the residents to execute a meticulously planned evacuation using a giant balloon-lifted life raft. The story ultimately encapsulates themes of cooperation, the power of rationality, and the resilience of communities in the face of natural disasters. Awarded the Newbery Medal in 1948, this book continues to engage readers with its imaginative storytelling and exploration of human potential.
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The Twenty-one Balloons by William Pène du Bois
First published: 1947; illustrated
Type of work: Adventure tale
Themes: Travel, science, and nature
Time of work: 1883
Recommended Ages: 10-13
Locale: San Francisco and Krakatoa, an island near Java in the South Pacific
Principal Characters:
Professor William Waterman Sherman , a teacher of mathematics in a San Francisco boys’ school, who decides to travel around the world by balloonMr. F. , one of the Americans living on Krakatoa, who discovers Professor Sherman on the beach and becomes his friend and guideMr. M. , who discovered the volcanic island and its vast diamond mines, founded its society, and recruited the American families who live on Krakatoa
The Story
The Twenty-one Balloons, a travel adventure in the spirit of Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873; Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873), opens with the surprising discovery of Professor William Waterman Sherman floating in the Atlantic Ocean among the wreckage of twenty deflated balloons. Since Professor Sherman had set off three weeks earlier from San Francisco in one balloon, intending to sail across the Pacific Ocean, his rescue causes enormous curiosity throughout the world.
Professor Sherman tells how he sets off in his balloon for a leisurely float across the Pacific. A few days into the trip, however, a seagull punctures his balloon and forces him to make a dangerous landing on an apparently deserted island. Exhausted by his ordeal, he falls asleep on the beach. When he awakes, he is astonished to find an American man, who introduces himself as Mr. F., kneeling beside him, dressed in spotless, white, formal attire. Mr. F. takes Professor Sherman through the jungle and shows him a most amazing sight: a huge mine chock-full of millions of diamonds. While they make their way across the island, their progress is interrupted several times by violent earthquakes, which Mr. F. explains are caused by volcanic action.
The next morning, Mr. F. shows Professor Sherman around the island’s town, which consists of a variety of grand houses, each built in a distinct architectural style. Mr. F. tells him how the island was discovered by Mr. M., a San Franciscan, who returned to his native country and recruited nineteen other families to settle on Krakatoa and share in the fabulous wealth of the diamond mines. Together the families formed a Utopian society based on “Gourmet Government” organized around food. Each family runs a unique restaurant, offering food from a particular country, and each must feed the whole island’s population on their specified day of Krakatoa’s special twenty-day month. Hence, on “C” day the C. family serves Chinese food; on “D” day the D. family serves Dutch food.
The families on the island are nearly all scientific-minded and have invented a variety of strange and ingenious contraptions, from the M. family’s automatic bed-maker, sheet-washer, and electrified living-room furniture to the amazing balloon “airy-go-round,” a dazzling construction of boats and balloons that form a flying carousel. Everyone on the island cooperates fully and works in perfect concert. Even the smallest children patiently wait their turn for a ride in the balloon contraption and cheerfully help with the work on the island. The unique society of Krakatoa is as logical and scientific as its inhabitants.
Professor Sherman’s stay on Krakatoa, which the Krakatoans firmly tell him must be a permanent one, is to be cut short. Soon after his arrival, the island’s huge volcano begins to erupt. The people of Krakatoa have only enough time to launch their giant, balloon-lifted life raft before the volcano explodes, and, with it, nearly all the island. The Krakatoans are all unharmed, and their evacuation plan succeeds precisely as planned, with the one unfortunate exception that Professor Sherman has not had time to have his parachute made. The other families, one by one, parachute from the life raft as it passes over Asia and Europe, and Professor Sherman crash-lands the raft in the Atlantic Ocean.
Context
The Twenty-one Balloons is probably the most popular of William Pene du Bois’s numerous books, many of which also reflect his fascination with modes of transportation and incongruous inventions. Two of these are The Forbidden Forest (1979), in which a kangaroo stops World War I, and Bear Party (1951), about a group of quarreling bears’ masquerade party. They exhibit the same absurdly logical treatment of fantastic situations as The Twenty-one Balloons.
In 1948, The Twenty-one Balloons was awarded the Newbery Medal, an annual award by the American Library Association for the most distinguished children’s literature in the United States. William Pene du Bois is also a notable illustrator; in addition to producing the precise and graceful illustrations for his own books, he has illustrated numerous other children’s books, such as Rebecca Caudill’s A Certain Small Shepherd (1965) and George MacDonald’s The Light Princess (1962).
The subject and themes of The Twenty-one Balloons connect it to many other currents in literature, juvenile and otherwise. As a work of science fiction it shares the same optimistic faith in technology as the works of Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum’s The Master Key (1901), and Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift stories. Underlying this cheerful confidence in humanity’s scientific and mechanical inventions is an almost Enlightenment-like belief in the power of human rationality to produce not only fantastic and useful machines but also ideal and efficient societies. The enduring popularity of The Twenty-one Balloons is no doubt the result in good measure of the author’s skill in couching his piquant, fabular examination of the contrast between the forces of nature and human ingenuity in a lively and imaginative adventure story.