Henrik points to the screen so that his father can see, but he is not paying attention. He will grow up to be a balloonist, and one day, if he is lucky, he will take part in the festival like all the men on the television.

Seeing them has cemented the dream in his heart. Hypnotized, Henrik watches as hundreds of balloons color the air. Balloonists come from all over the world to fly, each of them sailing the path Rozier began but never finished. In France, the country where Rozier flew, there’s a festival held in his name. On television every year the news broadcasts the world ballooning festival. Pictures first-crayon swirls of color circling round and round. He places it in his sweater pocket where, he feels, he’ll remember. He rips one of the woodcuts, an image of Rozier, from the book. Rozier and his flight companion, Pierre Romain, fell to their deaths. He had a plan to cross the English Channel, and, while more than 1,500 feet in the air, the wallpaper of the balloon’s envelope got wet because of the weather, and the balloon deflated. Left out of the story is what happened during Rozier’s last attempt at flying. The book gives brief snippets of Rozier’s life, first describing the process he went through to create his first balloon, and it ends with him flying high in the air. Because of this, Henrik too has learned to be solitary, instead spending his days after school reading in his books or drawing pictures.Īs a boy Henrik is given a book full of woodcut images that tell the story of Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, the world’s first balloonist. His father is a mild-mannered man used to the solitary work of constructing and repairing shoes. Henrik’s mother died shortly after he was born, and so he’s never known her. He’s lived with his father, a shoemaker, in a small countryside house at the top of a hill. Henrik has lived his entire life in Mettlach, a small town near the French border.

Leopardia by LaTanya McQueen