Where Do Balloons Go?

Title: Where Do Balloons Go?

Author: Jamie Lee Curtis

Illustrator: Laura Cornell

Picture book for ages (approximately) 5 and up

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary:

This book describes a curious child’s thoughts as they release a balloon into the air.

Opinion:

I picked this book because I am a science specialization and thought this might be used as an introduction to an atmosphere unit. It is an adorable story with great flow and rhythm as you read. Your imagination goes soaring along with these balloons to places you never thought of before. Each new page is a new adventure and you never know where you’ll be going next. Curtis personifies the balloons giving them human characteristics, such as, feelings. The illustrations add to this by showing balloons out to eat and at a hospital.

The illustrations in this book are wonderful. They are soft, but bright watercolor giving that dream-like or imaginative appearance.  They show many things not described in the text, such as on one page the text says, “Are they always alone? Do they meet up in pairs?” the corresponding illustration is in a restaurant with human families and couples sitting next to and around balloon families and couples. There are two balloons “kissing” while one balloon is by herself being stood up and another balloon “child” has breadsticks in its “ears.” I would have never thought up anything like that for those two lines of text.

I would use this book in my classroom as I said, for an introduction to an atmosphere unit. We could read this book then take our own fictional balloon through what would really happen if it was released. What layers of the atmosphere would it pass through? What weather would it meet? Maybe for more advanced students where would it end up based on wind currents?