The winner of the 2004 Governor General's Award for Children's Text, Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, is a great science fiction read with a twist. Instead of going into the future, this young adult novel takes place in an imaginary past. The story’s characters are on the airship cruise liner, Aurora. Matt Cruse, a teenaged cabin boy recounts pirates robbing the luxury airship leaving them short of hydrium gas, the airship’s fuel. Thereafter its passengers and crew end up grounded on an uncharted island. Kate de Vries, a chaperoned passenger goes off exploring. Matt, feeling more than an obligation tags along helping Kate fulfill what she considers her “duty to science.” On their third exploration, the pirates capture them; ingeniously they escape, but soon find that these pirates have taken over Aurora. Kate and Matt must save the airship, or else the rest of the world will deem Aurora, as being lost at sea and they will never to get to unveil their discovery.