THE YELLOW BALLOON

A lost balloon leads a tiny SUV, and armchair tourists who are willing to follow, on a wordless, globe-spanning chase—through busy urban, rural, arctic, desert, mountain, savannah, tropical island, and spooky forest scenes, all seen in wide-angle aerial views. Dematons dissolves barriers of time and space, so that, for instance, on the ocean an aircraft carrier passes two wooden warships exchanging broadsides, while just across the gutter, dolphins sport, as a sea monster undulates past a cruise ship, a tattered voyager on a wooden raft, and a miniature Polynesian paradise. Rapt young viewers will find an array of similar mini-stories, along with the errant balloon and its pursuer, on every spread; despite an occasional bobble, such as a totem pole surrounded by teepees in one well-populated woodland, this elaboration of visual ideas proposed in the author’s Let’s Go (2001) makes an absorbing odyssey. (Picture book. 5-8)