The Twenty-One Balloons is a classic children’s fantasy-adventure novel written and illustrated by William Pène du Bois, published in 1947. It was awarded the prestigious Newbery Medal in 1948. Blending real historical events (specifically the cataclysmic 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatoa) with whimsical imagination, brilliant engineering concepts, and satire, the novel follows the astonish…