My Red Balloon

Originally published in 2011, Japanese author-illustrator Yamada’s first children’s book follows the journey of a girl who boards a bus while holding a red balloon. Each time the old-fashioned yellow bus stops, an animal gets on—a bear, a rabbit, and so on—and when the balloon blows away, the animals kindly help the girl search for it. “Penguin,” they ask the most recent passenger, “did you see where the red balloon went?” “It’s flying up in the clouds,” Penguin reports. Yamada paints flat, naïve-style landscapes with gentle hills and stylized trees. Warm colors and the wide spreads lend an air of dreamy calm as the bus stops and stops again. Alert readers will notice that yellow signs show that each bus stop is reserved for the animal seen waiting there. Although the balloon meets an untimely end, the animals and the bus driver gather around the girl, drawing her attention to another red balloon in the sky—the one that sets there every night. A quiet bedtime excursion for youngest readers. Ages 2–6. (May)