When I was in my early teens my class read William Pene du Bois’ book, The Twenty-One Balloons. I was hooked by the very first chapter, which described balloon flight: “A wonderful way to travel, particularly if you want to travel from your home to school. You get up early in the morning with your school books, climb into the basket, look in the direction of the schoolhouse, untie the ropes and fly off. On your way many delightful things can happen, such as a) the wind will be calm and you’ll never get to school; b) the wind will blow in the wrong direction and take you 50 miles away from the school, and c) you might decide to play hookey, just once, and nobody can bother you in a balloon.” The end of the book involves the island of Krakatoa in Java, which disappeared in a volcanic explosion on this day in 1883. You knew I'd get around to volcanoes eventually, right?
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