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Hot Air: The (Mostly True) Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride

By Marjorie Priceman

You’ve probably seen them once or twice. They ride high up among fleecy cloud formations. Big, colorful bubbled balloons that glide swiftly through the sky, festooned with decorations, and attached to a basket for passengers to ride in.

Maybe you’ve dreamed about taking a ride on one yourself, or even had the opportunity to do so at a vacation site.

Then please hop into “Hot Air” by Marjorie Priceman, with your young reader, as it provides a colorfully picture book perfect window into the very first hot air balloon’s inaugural flight.

With some literary license of “what might have been”, Ms. Priceman’s wonderfully bold and colorfully larger than life art recreates the adventurous ride of the first air borne balloon -  AND its animal passengers.

Imagine the setting if you will. It’s the palace at Versailles {sigh}, with its 700 rooms, 15 fountains and 2,000 manicured gardens in full bloom. And it was the take off spot where, on September 19, 1783, with a ton of notables present, including King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and Ben Franklin, a demonstration of the first hot-air balloon took place.

The amateur inventors, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, are ready to show off their splendid and exciting new mode of transport to the waiting crowd.

Ms. Priceman’s charmingly woven tale of a duck, a sheep and a rooster aboard a solo flight in the Montgolfier’s trial balloon, is as big, bright and beautiful as their ride.

Her picture book takes and traces the farm folk aloft on an exciting excursion over the French countryside, solo!

In actuality, the trio did fly solo in a fifty-seven foot high, forty-one feet in diameter, 1,597 pound balloon, not counting an additional 900 pounds for the basket, the duck, sheep and rooster.

The flight lasted all of 8 minutes, but what a ride. And Marjorie Priceman’s Caldecott Honor Award winning book will hold young readers in thrall as they travel boldly where no farm animals have gone before. At least, I think not.

She pictures a small boy on a town roof top  shooting arrows upward at the balloon as it glides by, clothesline apparel swirls upward in the balloon’s draft, near misses occur on church spires on which the passenger sheep attaches an errant sock, and dive bombing birds clad in clothesline castoffs, circle the balloon in a frenzy. Amazing!

Young readers will not know where to look next as the trio’s flight unfolds, but they will be charmed immensely by the exploits of this stalwart bunch of feathered and furry air borne animals.

Watch for a duck-created homemade  swimming pool in the air; maybe the first one ever, and very inventive

Young readers will relish this ride, a safe touchdown, and the trio feted with much food and frolic at their safe arrival.

The historical details of the ride, given at the rear of the picture book in “A Brief History of Montgolfier’s Balloons,” are quite accurate, but Ms. Priceman’s picture book imaginings are the best.

Vive la difference!

Jazz Age Josephine

By Jonah Winter; illustrated by Marjorie Priceman

Recently looked up an overview of National African American History Month on the Law Library website of the Library of Congress.

It states that it “celebrates the contributions that African Americans have made to American History in their struggle for freedom and equality and deepens our understanding of our Nation’s history.”

I thought that I would perhaps focus this contribution on some of the astounding African American women in the arts.

Not that those men and women involved in the initial struggles for equality are to be short changed this month. They certainly paved the way for the recognition of people of color in the arts – and they are many and multi talented!

But I wanted to mention two women this month; namely jazz singing and performing giant Josephine Baker, and the picture book that brings her to abundant life called “Jazz Age Josephine”.

And ballerina Misty Copeland, literally flies through hard knocks in life with both talent and grace in this award winning picture book, illustrated by Christopher Myers, called “Firebird.” She is the first African American soloist at the American Ballet Theatre! And illustrator, Christopher Myers recently won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book” for this Penguin Young Readers title!

And now to the dream of a young Miss Baker!

If we stand on the shoulders of the people that came before us, that is certainly true of a young Josephine Baker growing up in wrenching poverty in St. Louis. But Josephine’s granny tells her “Someday you’re gonna be a princess.” And she had the courage to dream those words to a truth all her own.

Tenacity, humor, talent and timing converge in the life of Josephine Baker to propel her to New York where she initially slept on a park bench.

From the chorus line to the heights of the Jazz Age in 1925, she travels to Paris where she becomes the toast of the town.

 

Gay Paree!

Josephine!

Here’s an act

they’ve never seen!

Dances like the Shimmy, Mess Around, Shake and the Charleston, make Josephine the rage when her great act includes outrageous costumes and a voice to boot.

Her fairy tale life is brought to perfection with strong punched up color art as strong and resilient as Ms. Baker herself. The art is from two time Caldecott honoree, Marjorie Priceman.

I didn’t know that Ms. Baker was there on the podium the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech! Civil rights activism was also a big part of her life.

She and he both dreamed of a better life for themselves and others, and it is a testament to what is possible with a dream, a large measure of faith in the dream, and a resilience that doesn’t allow it to die.

Great messages for young readers to hear that are growing up today!

Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell is an expertly crafted biography that can be used to teach students a variety of craft moves during a biography writing unit of study.

I’ve fallen behind with the reading logs again—it’s inevitable that I will, from time to time—but I can report that my Rilla-read-aloud time has taken a leap forward into snuggling in with long, text-heavy books of the sort she wasn’t terribly interested in a month or two ago. Brambly Hedge, crammed with all those detailed, pore-overable drawings, hooked her on tales of small, industrious, quaintly dressed animals with British accents (she was already a Potter fan); we’re now well into Tumtum and Nutmeg, and she hasn’t seemed to notice or mind that there are far fewer illustrations, and only black-and-white, at that. There are bustling, clever mice and I get to unleash my best Monty Python impressions on the dialogue. (Tumtum is Michael Palin, of course, and who else is Baron Toymouse but Cleese’s Black Night? My Nutmeg, on the other hand, seems to want to be the cook from the current Upstairs, Downstairs series.)

As for picture books, recent hits with my younger three include:

Rachel Fister’s Blister by Amy MacDonald, art by Marjorie Priceman.

Rachel Fister has a blister, and everyone around her has a cure. Silly, satisfying rhyming text; Rilla in particular enjoys this kind of linguistic fun.

Good New, Bad News by Jeff Mack.

This one’s a great pick for the 3-6-year-old set, all ye aunties and uncles and godparents out there. A rabbit and a mouse and a picnic gone bad. No, good! No, bad! No, good…The kind of bright, bold, funny drawings my littles are especially drawn to, and unpredictable twists within a highly predictable (ergo comfortable and appealing to preschoolers) structure.

It’s a Tiger! by David LaRochelle, illustrated by the wonderful Jeremy Tankard.

You know how much we love Tankard’s work. Gorgeous coloring in this book and so much humor and excitement in the drawings. I love that heavy outline on the tiger; Jeremy was an inspired choice to illustrate this particular book. It’s a rollicking jungle adventure of the best kind, with a suitably ferocious tiger lurking in all sorts of unexpected places, and a kind of “We’re going on a bear hunt” vibe to the text. Huck loves it, and not just because you get to shout “IT’S A TIGER! RUN!” every few pages.

Jazz Age Josephine
By Jonah Winter
Illustrated by Marjorie Priceman
Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-104169-6123-9
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now

When we try to name the biggest and best picture book biography authors out there, two names spring immediately to mind. The first is David Adler. Mr. Adler specializes in picture books that go by the straightforward titles of “A Picture Book of [Enter Name Here]“. It makes him easy to spot on a shelf. All his books look pretty much the same with stories that reduce their subjects to a couple key points. They are serviceable in the best sense of the term. They serve a purpose. They also couldn’t be more different from the works of the great picture book biographer Jonah Winter. Where Mr. Adler is all white borders and straightforward fonts, Mr. Winter’s books leap off the shelf and make a dive for your jugular. They pop and smack and wrest your attention away from the glittery fictional pack. His latest, Jazz Age Josephine, is no different. A witty and glam look at a person rarely seen in picture book bios, Winter uses his storytelling skills to spin the tale of a fine lady, never told in quite this way before.

“Well, she was born up in St. Louis, and she grew up with those St. Louis Blues / Yes, she was born in old St. Louis, and she grew up singin’ nothin’ but the blues, / She just had one old ragged dress and a pair of worn-out old shoes.” That was Josephine Baker back in the day. Fortunately, the kid had pep. She could move and goof off and her dancing was so good that it earned her some money from time to time. Little wonder that when her home was burned by angry racists she headed straight for New York City. There Josephine was able to get some roles on the stage, but the minstrel parts were particularly galling. So off she flew to Paris and once she got there, “Paris, France – instant fame! / Everybody knows her name!” And though she missed her home, she was a jazz age baby and a hit at long last.

I did a cursory check of the reader reviews of this book online and saw that some folks were a bit peeved that Mr. Winter dared to mention hot topic issues like racism and minstrel shows. I think that highlights why it is that this is the first time such a biography for kids has been attempted (there was Ragtime Tumpie by Alan Schroeder in 1989 but that just looked at Josephine’s youth). The story of Ms. Baker is more difficult than your average Rosa Parks / Frederick Douglass bio. If you’re going to talk about Josephine then you have to talk about why she left America. You have to talk about what the state of the country was at that time, and why she felt she couldn’t return there. Then there are other issues as well. For one thing, is it possible to talk about Ms. Baker without mentioning the banana skirt? Winter doesn’t talk about the costume (six-year-olds are notoriously bad at pronouncing the word “burlesque”) but illustrator Marjorie Priceman does include a subtle glimpse of it from the side in two separate pictures. Meanwhile Mr. Winter does a good job of making it clear that Josephine was sad to be away from the States but that to become a star she had to go elsewhere. Interestingly the book ends at about that point, leaving the Author’s Note to explain her work with t

By Phoebe Vreeland, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 4, 2010

Thanksgiving is a time for pie.  Pie makes me think of Harold and his purple crayon.  Remember that picnic on the sandy beach?  “There was nothing but pie.  But there were all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best.”  My daughter and I love to imagine what all the different fillings could be. Who doesn’t love freshly baked pie, the most amazingly delectable dessert that fills the home with its tantalizing aroma?  It’s such a perfect vehicle for a scoop or dollop of some cool creamy topping.  Kids love to help bake, especially mixing, licking their sweet, sticky fingers and rolling out pie dough.

Here follows a list of picture books—all about pie—to share with your little ones.  Some simply get your mouth watering, but most are laced with a secret ingredient.  There is a reminder about abundance, a lesson on humility, and a tale of perseverance.  You will also find a trip around the world, a juicy alphabet primer and a cautionary tale for the literal-minded—from Amelia Bedelia, of course.  A few even include a recipe so good that you won’t need to invite a very hungry moose and deserving porcupine to help you finish.

All for Pie, Pie for All

by David Martin (Author), Valeri Gorbachev (Illustrator)

Reading level: Ages 0-5

Paperback: 32 pages

Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (August 12, 2008)

Source: Library

Publisher’s synopsis: In this merry, multi-species story cooked up with folksy warmth and humor, everybody gets a piece of the pie — and then some.

Grandma Cat makes a delicious apple pie, and there’s plenty for everyone — and even a piece left over. Grandma Mouse finds a piece of apple pie, and there’s plenty for everyone — and even crumbs left over. Grandma Ant spies some crumbs of apple pie, and there’s plenty for everyone. But what’s left over after cats, mice, and ants have had their fill? Little readers will eat up this scrumptious, gently math-related story that’s as sweet and satisfying as a fresh-baked dessert.

Add this book to your collection: All for Pie, Pie for All

The Apple Pie Tree

Spring just may be my favorite season. The following books are a great representation of this sweet and thriving time of year.