One of the maddening things about the current boom in children’s fiction is that so few would-be Rowlings realise the speed with which they have to hook their reader’s attention. Children do not and should not endure boredom in a book. This is especially the case with boys, who will give a story one paragraph, at most, before the siren call of the Playstation blots out all thought. So when you begin: “The storm boiled above the ocean, a dark, bristling wall of cloud, blocking our passage west” you’re off to a good start. Within a few pages, as the air-ship soars dangerously high and our hero spots a ship loaded with gold, you can fasten your seat-belt for a terrific read and forget all about pressing buttons on a console.

Skybreaker is the sequel to Airborne, the first of an Indiana Jones-style adventure trilogy set in a world geographically like this one but dominated by zeppelins or air-ships. The irrepressible cabin boy Matt Cruse won sufficient treasure at the end of Airborn to afford his coveted place as a trainee at the Airship Academy, but his troubles are by no means over. The rich and beautiful Kate, with whom he is in love, is also in Paris, but with no money, a widowed mother and a long series of exams ahead of him he hasn’t a chance as a suitor. (Warning: there is one snog in chapter two, but it’s over quickly.) Then he realises that the legendary ghost ship Hyperion, spotted in a terrifying ascent at the beginning, might be the solution – as long as he can get to it before some pirates do. Only Matt knows the co-ordinates of the Hyperion’s last sighting, so the hunt is on. With crooks and pirates on his heels, a debonair captain flirting with Kate, a gorgeous gypsy girl in possession of the secret key to defuse the ship’s bombs and a heart boiling with jealousy and courage, this is exactly the kind of adventure story children love best.

Who hasn’t looked up and dreamt of strange lands and stranger animals living in the sky? From the land of the Giants reached by Jack’s beanstalk to the floating Island of Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels, children’s stories have always imagined a parallel world in the clouds. For aficionados of this kind of tale, Skybreaker will have some familiar features, not least its aerozoans, presumably descended from Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, The Horror of the Heights. Kate, being a keen zoologist, is desperate to find the ship’s strange specimens, but these aerial cephalopods, armed with an electric sting, are far more frightening for being inside a ship full of booby-traps and dead bodies. Grunel, the ship’s owner, was an inventor trying to find a way to make “hydrium”, the lighter-than-air helium type fuel on which the world’s air-ships depend, and according to his journal, he has a dream of constructing a Laputa-like city in the air. But Matt and Kate are about to discover how it all went wrong, and only their wits and skill can save them from a grisly fate.

The plot alone would make this series a wonderful film, but Oppel is also good at depicting character. Not only Matt and Kate but a host of other people spring to life, side-stepping cliché with grace and humour. The setting is what will appeal most, however. Children love the idea of travelling by balloon, and the combination of aeronauts and pirates blends Jules Verne with Treasure Island. There is cold, thin air and the constant danger of freezing to death or losing your mind from oxygen starvation on the one hand; treasure, comradeship and traditional shanties on the other. Its 453 pages go far too quickly, but that’s always the trouble with stories you just can’t wait to read.

Also enjoy:

1. Jean de Brunhoff, Babar’s Travels 3+ Intrepid elephants on honeymoon voyage.
2. John Burnignham, Cloudland, 5+ Albert falls off a cliff into Cloudland. Glorious, stirring pictures.
3. Hilda Lewis, The Ship that Flew, 6+ Buy a magical model ship for high adventure.
4. Noel Langley, The Land of Green Ginger, 7+ Witty update of Aladdin, featuring legendary floating island.
5. L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz, 9+. Over the rainbow for Dorothy and Toto.
6. Kenneth Oppel, Airborne, 9+. The first instalment of Matt’s thrilling aerial adventures.

The Times. October 8, 2005.