After Kenneth Oppel's award winning bat trilogy, he has introduced
us to a new series that is better then the last. This series starts
off with the amazing book Airborn staring character Matt Cruse.
Airborn is set in an imaginary past where planes weren't invented
yet and air ships like the Zeppelin are all over the sky instead.
Airborn was a big shift in subject for Kenneth Oppel, but it still
contains his favourite idea of flight.
The beginning of Airborn is a little different from the normal
novel. Airborn starts off with the main character in the airship
The Aurora on watch duty. When Matt spots a floating object he
knows that something is wrong and calls for the captain. Once matt
gets a closer look he finds that it is a hot air balloon with no
one in it. Matt being the youngest crew member, is the bravest and
is sent through the docking port to go and rescue the basket and
any survivors of what they think was a storm. Matt finds an
unconscious body that is badly injured and close to death. He
rescues the basket and almost all is ok. The man died in the night
latter that day.
A year later Matt boards the ship again as a crew member for a
passenger flight across the ocean to Paris. After they take off a
bird plane is approaching behind, and through the radio they find
that one of the late passengers is on it, so they allow it to come
in through the boarding dock. The late passenger is Kate with her
guardian. Matt guides them to their quarters and tell them Kate and
her guardian what the schedule is for the trip.
As the trip progresses Matt sees Kate very often with her guardian
right beside. On one occasion Kate is in the bar and stays till it
closes and Matt happens to be the bar tender. When the bar is empty
Kate asks Matt if he would bring her two hot drinks to her chamber.
When Matt arrives she is alone and she is reading a journal, the
mans that he rescued from the hot air balloon. Kate tells Matt the
story of how the man he rescued was her grandfather. Kate also
tells him why he was n his journey and gives him the mysterious
journal to read. The journal talks about the mans trip and all the
creatures he saw. At the middle of the journal he finds that the
old man had discovered a weird flying panther animal that sounds
very strange at first. The rest of the journal is all sketches of
the weird animal and small jot notes of his various
discoveries.
The next day when he is on crow's nest duty (a look out at the top
of the Aurora) he spots something very strange land on the ship. At
first Matt is taken in surprise because he thinks that the creature
is one of the strange birds from the old man's diary. But then
again the diary said that they can not land so Matt is a little
reassured about the situation. Soon on closer inspection he finds
that it is just a tired Albatross passing by. He calls down to the
captain to ask permission to scare away the bird and gets approved.
He attaches his safety line to the rope running around the ship and
goes out. As he approaches the Albatross it fly away. In that
second of him watching the bird fly away, Matt spots a large black
shape approaching the ship. Matt jumps back in to the crows nest
and calls the captain. He can see it to. The ship starts to
approach them and chase them but does not respond to signals. It
slowly pushes them towards the lake. All of the sudden people in
black suits go down lines and land on the ship. SKY PIRATES!
Will Matt and Kate find the strange birds?
Will the sky pirates destroy the ship?
What will happen?
Read the book to find out!
I found Kenneth Oppel as a role model for all kids who would like
to become authors like me. Ken wrote his first book when he was
incredibly young and give me inspiration to start when your young
and then get better over the years. This is what I believe made
Kenneth Oppel such a talented author who is now writing award
winning novels. Around Christmas time I went to one of the Toronto
public libraries to listen t him read from Airborn. When he was
explaining about his books I learnt that he spent a number of years
writing screen plays for Hollywood just to get enough money to be
able to continue being an author for the rest of his life. This
shows that is you have a dream then you must pursue it until you
succeed because it will be worth it when the time comes. Ever since
I read his Silver Wing trilogy I have been reading his other books
and looking forward to the next book after Airborn. Kenneth Oppel
is undoubtedly one of my favourite authors.