Nancy Keane's Booktalks -- Quick and Simple
 
Oppel, Kenneth.
AIRBORN
New York : Eos, 2004
IL YA
ISBN 0060531800
Click on the book to read Amazon reviews
Booktalk # 1
Matt Cruise didn’t believe in mysterious creatures. He was cabin boy on the Aurora, a nine hundred foot long dirigible-like airship that carried people long distances between cities. Matt loved being airborn. He could name all the constellations and he saw in the stars and on the bridge of the Aurora all the adventure he could imagine.

Matt’s dream was to become a sailmaker. Matt’s father had been a sailmaker. Sailmakers kept the huge hydrium filled airships ready for flying and repaired them if necessary in flight. Sailmakers had real dangers to deal with like pirates and weather.

Then one day Matt helped rescue a crippled balloon and heard the dying words of its pilot. The old man spoke of magnificent creatures, an undiscovered species, he had seen flying around an unknown island. Of course, he was delirious. Matt knew that, everybody knew that. Until a year later when his granddaughter, Kate, showed up as a passenger on the Aurora, carrying her grandfather’s log, and determined to see what he had seen.

When Matt examines the log he finds an amazing, unbelievable story. And he becomes involved in a search for creatures that may rival or surpass anything airborn in his world?

Booktalk by Tom Reynolds, Sno-Isle Regional Library System.  Washington Evergreen Young Adult Book Award nominee, 2006-2007

Booktalk #2

Matt Cruse lives, breaths, and love his life on the airship Aurora…a giant blimp that travels the world, delivering cargo and entertaining wealthy passengers. Though Matt is a lowly cabin boy, he dreams of the day he can follow in his father's footsteps and become a full crewmember. While he is pretty sure he has what it takes to become a sailmaker, he secretly aspires to be Captain one day, leading a crew of his own. What Matt wants is a simple life, with good honest work, and to never have to sleep on the land. Little does Matt know the adventure in store for him, with mystery, murder, pirates, shipwrecks, romance, and a fantastic discovery in the skies.

Booktalk by Dawn Rutherford, KCLS  Washington Evergreen Young Adult Book Award nominee, 2006-2007

Booktalk #3

Are you ready for an incredible adventure? This fantasy book has it all, airship crashes, pirates and murder. Follow Matt Cruse, cabin boy aboard the airship, Aurora and his partner Katie de Vries, a passenger, as they investigate rumors of a beautiful flying mythical creature reported near a deserted island.  (Jean B. Bellavance for Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Awards, 2006-2007)

SUBJECTS:    Airships -- Fiction.
                        Pirates -- Fiction.
                        Imaginary creatures -- Fiction.
                        Fantasy.
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