Sonderbooks Book Review of The Yellow Balloon

Reviewed March 29, 2005.
Front Street Books, Asheville, North Carolina, 2004. Originally published in The Netherlands in 2003. 28 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (E DEM).

I began looking at this book at the library, but decided to take it home when I became so absorbed that I didn’t notice when a customer walked in. After I took it home and my 10-year-old son looked at it, he asked me not to turn it back in for awhile.

The Yellow Balloon has no words except the title. The pictures show scenes from all over the world—a European city, farmland, mountains, Egyptian desert, Africa, an ocean scene with pirates, an Arctic scene, a South American jungle, and more.

The scenes are full of interesting, tiny details. For example, in a nighttime European forest scene, you can see the Bremen Town Musicians scaring a robber out of a house. In the desert, you see a mirage of a dying traveler. My favorite one is in the corner of the city picture. Batman is getting ready to jump off a building. (Be careful, Batman! You can’t fly!)

As you look through the book, you begin noticing certain people or things on more than one page. After awhile, you suspect that some (besides the obvious yellow balloon) indeed appear on every single page. You can’t resist going back and seeing the story of these four things and people, as well as catching some other things that move from one scene to another.

It’s difficult to stop looking at this book once you get started. You’ll notice more imaginative details every time you pick it up. I enjoyed looking at it with my son, as we kept pointing things out to each other.

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****The Yellow Balloon*

by Charlotte Dematons