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

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Kareem Between

By
  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A World Without Summer

By
A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Written by Nicholas Day Illustrated by Yas Imamura New York: Random House Studio, 2025. Informational. 294 pages. In 1815 on a small island in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted. The blast was the largest in human history, and one of the deadliest. Though it couldn't be understood at the time, the deadly blast half a world away would lead to catastrophic famine in Europe, prompt westward expansion in America, and inspire the novel Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley. The global climate disaster following the explosion also led to inventions like modern meteorology and the early invention of the bicycle. The people living at the time couldn't have seen how everything was connected, but this fast paced narrative assures that readers will. As he did in 2024's Sibert winner The Mona Lisa Vanishes, Nicholas Day does an impressive job of weaving together different historical events into one single, compell...
Post a Comment
Read more