A journal entry is the correct answer
The literary device that the author used in the passage is hyperbole. A hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses extreme overstatement or exaggeration to have a humorous, ironic, or heightened dramatic effects.
Example: I am so hungry I could eat an elephant.
Answer: Japan
Explanation:
Christopher Columbus may have been the first recorded European to reach the Americas but this was not his original target. Columbus had wanted to get to Japan and from there, Asia and it never even occurred to him that the Americas might be in the way of this.
So he sailed on a latitude that he thought would take him to Japan which was why he mistook Cuba for China and Hispaniola for Japan when his voyage reached those islands.
In Mattie's mind, Blanchard's balloon—“a yellow silk bubble escaping the earth”—symbolizes freedom, particularly an escape from her home, where she feels as if she's trapped and treated like a child.
