Iris on Books is one of my favourite blogs for reviews of fiction for adults. Iris tends to review classics and forgotten classics, books about and written by women, with a focus that I particularly like on world literature.

For the month of June, Iris (who happens to be Dutch by birth but currently living in Sweden) is hosting a special event focussing on Dutch literature. I’ve been meaning to write about our favourite Dutch books forever and a day but have kept putting it off – I have so many I want to share with you that it’s always seemed like too big a project to undertake. However, inspired by A Month of Dutch Literature, I’m now going to jump in and share the best of translated Dutch children’s picture books with you over the next few weeks.

Of course, this fits in quite well with my Reading Round Europe project for this year. It’s been too long since we last did a little bit of travelling! I’ve definitely got itchy feet and today’s book is the perfect read in these circumstances.

As with many brilliant picture books, the core idea behind The Yellow Balloon by Charlotte Dematons is incredibly simple; A balloon is let go of and it floats around the world. There could hardly be a barer basic storyline to this entirely wordless book. Despite, and perhaps also because of this, Yellow Balloon is a tour de force of both storytelling and illustration, a book your children will spend hours with, a book I’ll wager you’ll pick up after the kids are in bed, to look for secret clues and take part in your own flights of imagination.

What makes this book so brilliant?

Not entirely unlike the magnificent Anno’s Journey, The Yellow Balloon is a wonderful book which will take you on a tremendous journey, although in its scope and style The Yellow Balloon is more like a fairy tale symphony to Anno’s (beguiling but less romantic) baroque invention.

To sum up: Let yourself have your breath taken away. Be immersed in 1001 different, amazing, intriguing stories. Treat yourself to this incredibly beautiful, imaginative and inspiring book!

An incredibly simple game but one that kept us playing and laughing all afternoon.

Whilst hunting our yellow balloon we had on in the background:

Other activities which could be fun alongside reading The Yellow Balloon include:

Don’t forget to visit Iris on Books before you leave the computer today – she’s a great reviewer and I’m sure you’ll find something interesting there, Dutch or otherwise

Disclosure: The Yellow Balloon was provided to me gratis by the publisher. This review, however, reflects my own and honest opinion.

So when I saw that Tim had a new book out I knew it was something I would want to read and review here. UnPOPpable, published last month, captures all the joy and wonder a simple balloon can bring. Kids will love this book as they will recognise themselves in it – the delight at playing with a balloon, squeezing it, holding it, the loss but also awe as it floats up into the sky, and the magic and squealy delight that comes when the balloon finally does pop.

The story is told with just a few bare words on most pages making is an enjoyable book for even the youngest children to listen to (and great for slightly older siblings to read to their toddler brothers and sisters). As an adult reader it’s a really fun read-aloud – there are plenty of opportunities to get into the spirit of things with loud popping noises.

Tim Hopgood’s illustrations are exuberant; even those depicting the black night sky and space feel bright and vibrant, and without wishing to give anything away, the big bang finale is bursting with energy just as it must have been back when time began.

I hope you’ll find an opportunity to give this book to a child with a helium balloon – I guarantee you will make someone very happy indeed!

Inspired by UnPOPpable we got up to some good old fashioned play with balloons. The girls drew silly faces on them and then we rubbed the ballons on our hair to charge them with static electricity. Once charged we could stick our balloons pretty much anywhere we liked – on the walls and on the ceiling. It seemed like magic to the girls!

Taking the magic to the next level I challenged the girls to stick a knitting needle in a balloon without popping it. Of course balloons ended up popping left right and centre, but then Mummy stepped in with the sort of magic that only mummies possess, and sure enough, with the use of a magic spell I was able to stick a knitting needle all the way through a balloon without it popping.

Now, as long as you promise not to give the game away I will share the magic with you

Blow your balloon up, but not too much – make sure there is still some slack in it around the knot. Get a long knitting needle and out of sight of your audience dip it in some cooking oil, and spread the oil up and down the needle. In front of your audience carefully, slowly stick your knitting needle into your balloon near the knot, where the rubber is relatively slack.

Moving confidently push the needle all the way through the balloon and out the other side – the relative slackness of your balloon and the oil on the needle should ensure that it does not pop despite you pushing a knitting needle all the way through. Your balloon may start to deflate (mine actually stayed inflated for about 30 minutes) – if it does so, talk loudly to cover the hissing noise of air escaping and then deliberately pop the balloon.

Here’s a video to give you a better idea of how this can work:

It’s a fun party trick and if you’re prepared in advance it’s a great way to make your kids think you really do possess magic powers – not a bad thing to have them believe!

Whilst we played with our balloons we listened to:

Other fun balloon activities include these:

Enabling a balloon to blow itself up – put some yeast and warm water inside a balloon, tie a knot and watch the balloon expand as the yeast gets to work. Needs to be overseen by an adult or they’ll be popping everywhere Thanks to children’s author @kathryniwhite for the tip!

What are your favourite balloon books and balloon activities?

Disclosure: I received my copy of this book gratis from the publisher. This review, however, reflects my own and honest opinion.

Photo: Crystl

Don’t you just love it when having kids “allows” you to do something you’ve always wanted to do, but as a “sensible” adult you felt you couldn’t quite get away with? Well this week I finally got to indulge in something on my if-only-I-were-a- kid-again wishlist…

Thanks to my wonderful daughter M, the new Disney-Pixar film UP, and a funny and quirky book called Up with Birds! by John Yeoman and (for the second post running!) Quentin Blake, I got to play with lots of helium filled balloons and a variety of playmobil, lego and duplo people. Sometimes being a mum is hard work indeed

It all began with a trip to see the film UP. M has been going to the cinema for about a year now and adores the whole experience from the orange curtain which “opens like magic, mummy” to the dancing she always does in the aisles as the credits roll at the end (to say nothing of the maltesers which are her cinema munchies of choice). In UP one of the characters uses hundreds of helium filled balloons to make his house fly. This vision reminded me of Up with Birds! – a story of how birds originally learned to fly, recounted and illustrated with great wit.

It was a long, long time ago, several years before you were born, that birds first began to fly. I’ll tell you how it happened.

In the days when birds used to walk everywhere life was very difficult indeed. Especially for the Fflyte family who lived in a small town where there were lots of birds. Most of them were very nosy, and whenever they found an open door they would just walk in.

The Fflyte family eventually become rather exasperated by the birds under their feet and so Dad Fflyte sets to finding a way round this problem.

Mr Fflytes’ solution is to enable his family to take to the air, with Icarus-inspired flying bike machines. But the bikes being rather heavy need some extra lift – and that comes in the form of large bunches of gas filled balloons. The flying bikes are a success and great fun. When the birds see what’s going on they too want to get in on the act, and so launch themselves for the first time ever into the air, each holding the string of a balloon in its beak.

Everyone is happy. Indeed a small fat sparrow is so happy that he gives a chirp of pleasure and… without the balloon string to hold on to he starts falling at speed towards the ground… Is it all over for the sparrow?

Let me just say that as is reassuringly often the case, that great mother of invention, necessity, ensures that the poor sparrow’s accident leads the birds to discover their true calling – that of flight

This original story from John Yeoman will make you laugh, a really enjoyable read, illustrated in classic Quentin Blake style. Although available in a format that makes it look like a picture book (and indeed it is packed with plenty of illustrations) this is probably going to be enjoyed most by children who are already reading or listening to longer stories such as Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile or The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me.

So with the story playing in our heads we went off to get some helium filled balloons. Once home we investigate how many balloons were necessary to lift (a) a duplo person (b) a playmobil adult (c) a playmobil child and (d) a lego person.

This article from How Stuff Works has some useful background information on the science of lifting things with helium balloons (or you could try this from the Learning Network at the New York Times), which I won’t go into here. Instead I’ll cut to the chase: We needed 5 balloons to lift a duplo person, 4 for a playmobil adult and 2 for either a playmobil child or a lego person Now you have the knowledge, you really ought to try it out for yourselves with your kids!

We then wanted to try flying our balloons a little higher than the height of our ceilings indoors so we came up with a different object for the balloons to lift – some “birds” made of craft feathers stuffed into a selection of felt tip lids from our junk stockpile.

These “birds” were lovely and light so they each needed only one balloon to lift them. As it was our intention not to let the balloons float off into the sunset we attached some kite string to each balloon before we let it float out in the garden – we didn’t test how how they could go with the kite string guy rope attached, but certainly well above our house roof!

As the sun and temperature dropped, our balloons were not so successful at lifting their payloads, and so we became blase about attaching kite string. This was not a good idea as before we knew it a gust of wind took our remaining balloons and sent them off on an adventure of their own…

Oh well. Definitely a fun afternoon for all, and we’ve picked up extra litter in the street to make up for our balloon pollution.

Up with the Birds!:

We’ve been having fun listening to Up in a Balloon by Alan Mills, It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend by Lunch Money and bringing back memories of my childhood with 99 Red Balloons by Nena.

Balloon related craftiness that we want to get up to next includes:

So do you feel like sharing what’s on your if-only-I were-a-kid-again wishlist? I’d love to hear from you