40 Book Challenge Reading Blog

Book: Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Pages read: 0-58

Prompts:

1. Describe the setting – when and where what you are reading takes place.

2. What has been the most interesting part of your reading?

3. Do you like what you’re reading? Why or why not?

     The author of Airborn, Kenneth Oppel, took note of the various details in the setting. As you may know, Airborn takes place on the luxury airship blimp, The Aurora. He described it to be quite large by saying, "She was a giant to be sure, nine hundred feet from stem to stern, fourteen stories high." This shows the readers that if you thick about it, the ship is actually gigantic! Oppel also noted the large amounts of windows featured in the ship. They were wide and had great views of the ocean eight hundred feet below. When Matt, the main character, brought Kate to her stateroom, he used a lot of detail in describing the luxuries of the room, red velvet curtains, vases of fresh flowers and more.

     The most interesting part so far was when Matt talked the old man right before he died. The man spoke of these "beautiful creatures" and asked Matt if he saw them. He later on said that "Kate would have loved them." At the time, we were not yet introduced to Kate, until a year later in the story. I wonder if the Kate he was talking about, was the Kate in the story. If so, how did he know her, was he her grandpa? Why would have Kate loved them? I guess that I will need to keep reading to find out what happens.

     So far, I do like what I am reading. One of the main reasons for this is the uniqueness in the story. I have not read yet one book about traveling on a blimp untill now, and I am actually learning a lot about them, unlike another old book. I also enjoy the way the author writes, for some reason, I feel the way he focuses a lot on details, helps tell the story much better, and paint an intricate picture in your head. Lastly, I am enjoying this book because of the time the book takes place. Although they don't mention the exact year, I did some research and found out that blimp travel was at it's peak around the late 1930s. The time zone is not the most common for books, and makes a very different feel to the story, unlike it would be in modern times.

Caption: This is a photo of what The Aurora would look like, as you can see, it is quite large.