Skip to main content

If You Like... Hot Air Balloons

By
Hot air balloons have always seemed like a fascinating and fun way to travel. Amazing aerial views, like those from an airplane window, mix with the slower pace of a train ride to let you take in the rolling hills and wispy clouds. If you're also interested in reading stories about floating among the clouds, try these books!

By Barbara O'Connor
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2021. Fiction. 234 pages.

Walter, a boy grieving the loss of his older brother, makes friends with his talkative new neighbor Posey. While the two of them are out catching minnows together in the creek, they meet an injured balloonist who enlists their help in recovering his damaged hot air balloon so that he can win an upcoming hot air balloon race. 

Written by Kristen Fulton
Illustrated by Torben Kuhlmann
San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC, 2020. Informational.

This informational book tells the true story of one family's escape from East Germany over the Berlin Wall using a handmade hot air balloon. 

By Matt Phelan
New York: Greenwillow Books, 2022. Fiction. 221 pages.

Inspired by the first hot air balloon flight (which involved a sheep, and rooster, and a duck) this historical fiction adventure sees the titular animals acting as spies to aid château caretaker Emile in heroically defending the drawings and inventions of Benjamin Franklin. The animals adventure across 18th-century France to stop a plot to crown an evil count the King of America.

Written by Sue Ganz-Schmitt
Illustrated by Iacopo Bruno
New York: Calkins Creek, 2024. Biography. 

Mary Myers was fascinated by hot air balloons, and along with her husband, she began designing and manufacturing her own hot air balloons that the couple then used to research weather conditions and set records in balloon flights.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Faker

By
Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...
Post a Comment
Read more