This February, our guest will be Kenneth Oppel, author of the award-winning Silverwing series and several other books for children and young adults. Today we'll be talking to him about his most recent series, which features the books Airborn and Skybreaker.
Set in a world parallel to our own, the books follow the adventures of Matt Cruse, a young sky sailor aboard the airship Aurora, and Kate de Vries, an amateur zoologist with a penchant for pursuing extremely dangerous new species of animals. From relentless sky pirates to ghost ships sailing at 20,000 feet above the Earth, to the airless realms of outer space, to say this series is action-packed is a supreme understatement. The books are incredibly fast-paced, and, while fictitious, contain just the right amount of believability to make them enticingly real. The characters are dynamic and witty, and at times the dialogue seems to crackle off the page. The interesting settings, cool machines, and wry humor make these books absolutely addictive and utterly satisfactory.
Airborn won the 2004 Governor General's Award and the Michael L. Printz Honor award in 2005. Skybreaker was the 2005 London Times Children’s Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller in 2006. The third book, Starclimber, is due out this month.
Posted with the kind permission of WPRB
Author photo by Peter Riddihough