Chapter Eight: Passarola Rising

So this one isn't a children's book, it just caught my eye while I was browsing the school library's Australian Fiction section.  It wasn't quite as captivating as, say The Hunger Games, but I enjoyed reading it in a calmer way.  It's a fun little piece of historical fiction with just a note of science fantasy in the titular airship (the Passarola), which is designed like a boat and propelled by wind in its sails, but which is held aloft by vacuum-pumped copper spheres.  Peppered with a bit of Portuguese and French, as well as some old-timey wording, the book's language itself was fun as well.