Review of
Buddy and His Flying Balloon,
by Howard R. Garis
Three out of five stars
Unusual and dated YA adventure
Some of the YA
adventure books targeted at boys that were published in the first half of the
twentieth century are unusual and don’t travel well across the years. This is
one of them. Buddy is an early teen boy with visions of being an inventor. In
this case, he takes a piece of canvas and uses sticks to form it into the shape
of a balloon. A local man loans him an actual basket from a balloon and Buddy
and his friends are all set to go on imaginary balloon rides.
When Buddy and
his friends spend the night in the balloon basket, they end up having an actual
adventure. Professor Higman is a balloonist that flies over during the night
and his dangling tow rope catches Buddy’s balloon and carries it along. They
end up at the fairgrounds of the next town, where they are of course a
sensation.
The premise
that turns the imagination into reality is a bizarre one that stretches your credulity,
even for a YA adventure book. That feature and the dialog makes this a book
that does not age well and is valuable only for a look back at how adventure
stories were crafted before the Second World War.
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