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Elisabeth Bacon
Patrick Jones
LIT 332-50
24 January 2016
Airborn as Young Adult Literature
Young adult $c%on is a genre widely misunderstood by the general public as being
pandering, emotional, and idealis%c. Adult readers, primarily familiar with popular title such as
Twilight, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars, tend to be dismissive of such $c%on
because the needs of adolescent readers aren’t being taken into account. Though there is
plenty of young adult literature which is published and appreciated by its target market, yet
can’t be considered excellent by certain standards, there is also a great wealth of well-written
young adult literature. Indeed, the authors of Literature for Today’s Young Adults point out that
“Young adult literature has a rela%vely brief and unse/led heritage, and there are many
disagreements about its quality” (Nilsen et al. 4), so it’s hard to determine which standards such
literature should be held to. Regardless, it is uniquely difficult to write a book which both meets
the standards for good literature and is desirable to the target audience: young adults. Kenneth
Oppel’s Airborn is an enjoyable read which $ts many of the quali$ca%ons needed to be
considered a quality work of young adult $c%on.
Airborn takes place in an alternate world—one which did not see the triumph of the
airplane, but of the airship. They are gargantuan, weighing many thousands of pounds, yet are
lighter than air thanks to the discovery of a new gaseous element—“hydrium”—and they
dominate the skies. The %tle character of Airborn and, indeed, of the trilogy as a whole, is a
young boy named Ma/ Cruse, who works as a cabin boy on a ship called the Aurora. When the
ship and its passengers are endangered by rough weather and the sudden appearance of
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pirates, Kate, an adventurous girl with high aspira%ons, pushes Ma/ to make a series of difficult
choices. Complica%ng the situation is their search for a mysterious creature which may or may
not exist. Through one misadventure a@er another, Ma/ learns to trust his ins%ncts, and
ul%mately $nds the creature, saves the ship, impresses the girl, and realizes his dreams.
Though he lives in a very diBerent world from today’s teens, Ma/ confronts many of the
same life issues they do. He is fourteen at the %me of the novel, but his experience best $ts into
the “middle adolescence” stage. He explores his independence aboard the ship on which his
father died, and works in order to send money back to his mother and sisters. Though he seeks
role models among the crew, he function quite independently of anyone else’s input, and is
less concerned with those rela%onships than with his own abili%es and inner struggles. Ma/
