You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum

By Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser
New York:  Dial Books for Young Readers (1998)

From cover to cover, this wordless picturebook creatively uses color and contrasts to tell the story of a young girl with a yellow balloon at the MET.  When the little girl and her grandmother arrive, the museum guard tells them she cannot bring in her balloon.  They convince him to tie it to the railing and watch it for them until they are finished.  As soon as they leave, a bird unties the balloon, and the storyline then follows the guard around the city as he chases the balloon, gathering quite a crowd as he does so.  Paralleling his journey is the little girl's reaction to different pieces of art in the museum.  Each page presents a famous work of art in the museum and matches it with a clever recreation in the city.  Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze's famous work, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (see link below), for example, is recreated with all the characters in a rowboat.  In this way, the little girl and her balloon are both experiencing art--she in the original form and the balloon in life in New York City.

 On each page, color is selectively used in order to divert the viewer's attention to the characters in the main storyline.  The little girl's balloon, for example, is bright yellow, which stands out from the black and white pedestrians, building, streets, and cars throughout the city.  Further, at the beginning of the story only the little girl, her grandmother, and the balloon are colored.  Next is the guard, and one by one the people he encounters and who join him on his quest to recapture the balloon are given color, bringing the story  to life.  In the background, in black and white, life goes on as usual.

Angles and lines are also used to communicate with the viewer.  At the beginning of the story, for instance, the little girl is reaching back from her grandmother to her balloon and it is leaning towards her; as she enjoys the artwork more, however, she and the balloon are usually pointing in the same direction.

The viewer is drawn into this story from the very front cover.  It is a great use of imagination and an easy story to talk about with young children, who can relate to the young main character seeing the Metropolitan Museum for the very first time.  The story also relates the importance of seeing art in the ordinary:  even a hodgepodge group of dog walkers, circus trainers, and musicians can be artistic and beautiful in their own way.  I love this story because it involves imagination and creativity on the part of the viewer and because it uses color to tell the story in a way that even words could not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851.jpg