Why has hepzibah opened a penny store in one of the gables of the house and why is this significant?

faulty parallelism is a grammar construction where there is no balance in the parts of a sentence they have a similar meaning but the grammar structure is not equivalent.

the correct version of this faulty parallelism in the sentence is:

jefferson wrote the declaration of independence, and he was the nation's third president.

the problem with the first version is that the sentence:

"jefferson was both the writer of the declaration of independence"

presents jefferson as both a subject and an agent for the verb "write" because if he was "the writer" then the declaration of independence was written by him, besides that fact, the sentence presents a dependent clause.

while the second sentence:

he was the nation's third president.

presents a basic subject+verb+object structure

so, to give a proper balance to the structure, or better said, to give a parallel structure, we must write a basic s+v+o structure in both sentences:

jefferson wrote the declaration of independence, and he was the nation third president.

21 balloons is the story of professor william sherman's travels.

in 1883, he set off from san francisco for a balloon ride over the pacific and was found a month later floating with 21 balloons in the atlantic ocean. this seemed an astounding feat and everyone wanted to know what had happened.    

professor sherman was loyal, however, and said he would tell his tale first to the western american explorers club in san francisco, of which he was a member. this built up suspense for several chapters before he began to tell of the wonders of his adventures and the amazing island of krakatoa, an island which had just been blown up by a volcano.  

the residents of krakatoa are all millionaires who live under a "gourmet government" of their own devising. we get to see all the incredible adventures that creative people with unlimited resources would create according to the author.