You Can't Take a Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum

Title: You Can't Take a Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum
Author: Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman
Illustrated: Robin Preiss Glasser
Published: Dial Books for Young Readers (1998), New York
Summary: In this wordless story a young girls and her grandmother view works inside The Metropolitan Museum of Art, while the balloon she has been forced to leave outside floats around New York City causing a series of mishaps that mirror scenes in the museum's artwork.
Age group: 8-10
Strengths: I like the contrast between colors. The story looks as if it was done by watercolors. You see, the main characters of the story are painted in different colors, while everything else is in black and white, but very detailed. However, as the story goes on, more and more people get involved with chasing the yellow balloon, meaning they become part of the story (they are colored and not a part of the background anymore). I also like how the people who do get involved within the chase resemble different artworks from the Metropolitan museum. One of the zoo-keepers resembles a greek statue, while a woman walking her three dogs represents a portrait of a woman holding her dog. It's like traditional art can be seen and expressed throughout a modern city (thinking outside the box). I think my favorite part is when the grandmother shows the little girl of two Grecian pots of a chariott and some men chasing after it, and of the portrait of George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which represents the people chasing after the yellow balloon. This story also gives good expressions and emotions to the characters. When the girl was told she was not allowed to bring the balloon into the musuem, one frame was big enough to show the girl's face (a close-up) to show her sad expression.
Concerns: I noticed that the frames on each page were different. That is ok, but as the story progressed, the frames become different from three or four frames to one entire frame (covering two pages) or half a frame (on one page). It somewhat confused me a little. It does not only have rectagular frames, but some circular frames, mostly showing the little girl and her grandmother looking at something. I also noticed that the little girl and her grandmother do not only see pictures, but pots, dresses, statues, etc. Some of these things looked real and it made me a little confused because these "real-life" pictures are surrounded by drawings and water color. The different things that the little girl and her grandmother sees are not things we would normally see. It's not easy piece of works (such as the Mona Lisa), and the people chasing the balloon are supposed to look like these artworks. Some pictures are not exactly like its Metropolitan artworks (such as the portrait of the woman and the dog and the woman in the park with her three dogs), but you can a general idea that they connect, one way or another.
Comments: I think this is a very interesting book, and probably for older students (from third to fourth grade) because there is a lot of detail in this story. A teacher can test his/her students on the different artworks presented throughout the story and see if the students can find the resemblance between the people chasing the balloon and the Metropolitan artworks. It's like a wordless challenge for the students, because there are no text in the story, so the children have to figure out what is going on.