Hot Air. The Mostly True Story of the First Hot Air Balloon Ride Caldecott Honor Book

Customer Reviews

Mon Dieu! Flying French Sheep

2007-12-20
Hot Air: The Mostly True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride is about . . . well, the title pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

I wanted to love this book because it is about two things that are very important to my life: French History (I am an author of the subject) and aviation (I have been married to a pilot for almost 20 years). However, I just didn't LOVE this book.

The writing was not clever or catchy, no fun repetitive phrases or colorful words that would engage young readers. Frankly, the story is bland, boring. I also found the different sizes of typeset annoying. The most important negative, however, is that the author contends Benjamin Franklin was at the hot air balloon ride over Versailles. This is not true. Benjamin Franklin witnessed early hydrogen balloon experiments.

Now, for the positive. The illustrations in Hot Air are absolutely beautiful, full of bold, lively colors that reminds me of a bright sunny day in a garden in Paris. I love, love the colors this illustrator used. I also like the back leaf information about the history of ballooning.

If you would like a children's book about the first manned hot air balloon flight, I highly recommend Mouton's Impossible Dream by Anik Scannell McGrory, which is a fun book to read...a sure hit with young readers.

Fun to Read!

2007-09-03
This book has a great story line with a sense of humor. Young kids love to hear me read it when I visit their classrooms.
I recommend you buy it as one of the books your primary grade kids will fight over.

My son enjoys this

2007-05-12
This book wasn't what I had imagined it to be. The first several pages contain a lot of words, and the last several pages are just pictures. My 6 year old son really enjoys this book, though, and asks for it at night.

Barnyard Animals Aloft

2006-01-31
Starting with the historical facts of the first hot-air balloon ride, which took place in Versailles, France in 1783, Priceman lets her imagination - and illustrations - run wild. The first hot-air balloon aviators (i.e., the guinea pigs) were a sheep, a duck and a rooster. After a few introductory pages of text, Priceman depicts the flight with a series of wordless illustrations. The complex pictures lend themselves to careful inspection to catch all the elements of the story. In the end, our barnyard aviators land safely, which I hope this is one of the true facts of this story. 2006 Caldecott Honor Book.

Congratulations on your 2nd Caldecott Award!!!

2006-01-27
I love this book and my children love it more. The story is hilariously told through the beautiful illustrations. The Caldecott committee made an excellent choice. This book would appeal to children of all ages.

Stratospherically Sublime

2006-01-27
The first "manned" hot-air balloon is about to take off! But what are those noises coming from the basket?

Based on the (POSSIBLY) true report of a day in 1783, this si the story of (PERHAPS) the bravest collection of flyers the world has ever seen, as (SORT OF) told to Marjorie Priceman.

Note to publisher: Let's not follow this up with a Laika picture book, okay? 2006-01-25
You just never know what those wacky Caldecott committees are going to do next, do you? Take Marjorie Priceman as your example. Flash back to 2005 and Ms. Priceman has fished a couple first-class picture books in the span of a single year. There's her own mildly amusing "Hot Air" which she both wrote and illustrated, and then there's Jacqueline K. Ogburn's charming, "The Bake Shop Ghost" which she merely did the pictures for. Had you sat any children's librarian (or possibly bookseller) down and asked them which of the two had a stronger chance at garnering a sought-after Caldecott Award, I think that a good 90% of them would have indicated the Ogburn creation. Which just goes to show that when it comes to committees, anything and everything is possible. Instead, "Hot Air" is one of the 2006 Caldecott Honor winners and it's sweet enough, I guess. For the life of me I cannot figure out what the committee felt was extraordinary about it, but it's perfectly inoffensive and nice in a mildly banal kind of way.

The two divides neatly into two parts: The true and the funky. The true story is rather interesting in and of itself. On September 19, 1783, large crowds of people gathered at the palace of Versailles to watch the world's first hot-air balloon launch. Above the crowds sat King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Anthoinette, and even Benjamin Franklin. "But enough about them". All thanks to inventors Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, the balloon had three passengers in it at the time. There was a duck, a sheep, and a rooster. From here on in until the very end the book we view the funky. The story becomes an almost silent journey, save for the occasional baa, quack, cock-a-doodle-doo, and moo. As we watch, the intrepid threesome make themselves at home with some long-underwear windsocks, save the balloon from the occasional piercing, fall, return, and get soaked, and eventually land due to a long-eyelashed bird's accidental popping. Returned in a glorious wheelbarrow, the three are greeted by the royals (let's not think too hard on what happened to THEM in time) and are praised accordingly for their noble efforts. A two-page spread at the back gives a brief history of the Montgolfier's dream and how they went about accomplishing it.

It's sweet enough, that's for certain. Priceman plays with perspective, distance, and breaks the pages into different quadrants depending on how she best wishes to convey her story. I suspect the fact that she did this is what caught the Caldecott committee's eye in the first place. Of course you don't grow particularly attached to the three animals, and the three animals don't appear to grow particularly attached to one another. The style of the pictures, the colors, and the images in them all conjure up a particular style that belongs solely to Priceman. There's a nice spinning-vertigolike moment when the sheep, duck, and rooster all discover that they are plummeting back to the earth. Priceman radiates circular colors off of their heads, along with multiple black lines indicating the direction in which they spin. If you are a fan of the style, you will be a fan of the book. If not, avoid at all costs.

Now I cannot for the life of me figure out why the publisher thought it would be a good idea to put the factual information about the Montgolfier brothers not on their own two pages but on the endpaper and back cover of the hardcover editions of this book. This may have seemed a clever cost-cutting measure at the time, but the result is that libraries that glue their bookflaps to their books (NYPL being just one example) will be inadvertently pasting over some vital information. As it stands, I know that on September 12 of some year something got shredded, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what or when it was exactly. Just that the king was involved in some way. Naughty bad Anne Schwartz! No more Caldecott worthy author/illustrators for you. Harumph!

If you were a big big fan of Priceman's, "Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin" (written by Lloyd Moss) then you'll probably enjoy this book as well. It is not, admittedly, a form of illustration that makes my little heart go pit-a-pat any faster. It's nice enough and inoffensive enough but before it won its award it sat forgotten on my library's shelves. After the furor dies down, back to the shelves it will undoubtedly return. A fine complement to the Caldecott Award winning, "The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel With Louise Bleriot July 25, 1900" by Alice and Martin Provensen. Definitely pair the two together if you're thinking of showing some first-in-flight books that DON'T involved those over-hyped Wright Bros.