69 pages • 2 hours read
William Pene du BoisThe 21 Balloons
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Concerning the Giant Balloon Life Raft”
Sherman joins the others at Mr. and Mrs. C’s pagoda house to enjoy a Chinese breakfast. The cuisine is quite different from what Sherman is used to, and, somewhat like the children, he picks at his food.
He tells Mr. F. that he’d like to go for a swim. They don swimsuits and bathrobes and walk down to a lovely beach. By now used to the rolling motions of the rumbling island, Sherman notes an oddity about the beach: “the ocean was quite calm and the beach was going up and down” (136).
They walk into the water up to their waists and find themselves on sand that rises up out of the water and then drops until they’re up to their necks, up and down repeatedly. To do any sustained swimming, they must venture farther out to avoid the rising and falling sea floor. They reemerge and sunbathe, letting the ground roll them this way and that until they are nicely sun-drenched on all sides.
