I'M FLYING!

When a young, self-styled fantasist starts tying helium-filled balloons to various household objects and deserving people (a teacher, for one), the heavens become filled with his launchings. Then to satisfy his wanderlust, he ties a few balloons on himself and has a cross-country, around-the-world journey that ends only when his parents launch a balloon of their own, beckoning him home for dinner. Ably penned drollery would be enough to give this a proper send-off, but Mathers' idiosyncratic paintings of the far-flung comers of the world extend the humor. Good times are in store for those who thoroughly eyeball the pages; the simple idea takes flight in a technicolor kaleidoscope.