Kenneth Oppel has taken swashbuckling pirates and the ocean liners of the early twentieth century and thrown them upward for an adventure series that has my three sons enthralled. Airborn is like Titanic in the sky, with zepplins instead of ships… and with pirates attacking Titanic and shipwrecking her, her crew, and her passengers on a deserted isle. Jolly good stuff, I’m telling you.
Oppel’s books are for older readers, so I have to censor some details when I read them to my not-quite-seven-year-olds. That’s okay by me. We’re now halfway through book two, Skybreaker, and the boys are begging for more. Literally begging. I had to threaten and cajole them into bed tonight as they pleaded, “Just one more chapter! Just one more page! Just one more minute!” But bedtime had come and gone . . . and quite honestly my throat was sore from reading for more than an hour already. That, after the boys had spent half an hour sitting in the van in our garage, refusing to exit because the Airborn audio book was playing its last chapter on our van’s cd player. That’s how great these books are.
And here’s another great thing: Read More…
