Customer Reviews

The Balloon Sailors

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This story seemed utterly fantastical to me-then I read that it was based on a true incident! (I know, I know -"Truth is often stranger than fiction.")
King Frick and King Frack have each inherited half the kingdom. They build a great stone wall that slices it in two. No one may cross the wall. Unfortunately it divides families from their relatives-in this story, little Tamala and Abalon and parents from Grandma and cousin Peter. The family sews together a huge balloon, attaching it to a basket outfitted with a gas burner.
One night they take off in their hot-air balloon, and sail over the wall, even while soldiers below attempt to shoot them down. They are reunited with their relatives.
The story is based on the wall constructed in 1961 to divide Berlin in two. In 1979, two East German families sewed a balloon four stories tall and sailed over the wall. (In 1989, the wall came down.)
"The Balloon Sailors" illustrates the bizarre circumstances that ideology and politics can visit upon citizens, and how some use great imagination and perseverance to overcome the barriers imposed upon them.
The heart-felt illustrations evoke folktales of old, depicting simple village folk and stereotypical kings.

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous reviewer. This book has magical illustrations, suggesting peasant life in the middle ages. The color palette is warm and pleasing, even as the problem is being described: a village is being cut in half by a wall that separates families and interrupts the day-to-day workings of the community's life. Work, school, and worship are all affected: even the train is kept from reaching the train station!

The family laments the situation. The children put notes to their grandmother in a balloon and send it into the air in the hopes of reaching her. The children wish that they could sail away too. The family begins a plan to constuct a hot air balloon and sail over the wall. Their mother, and accomplished quilter, will stitch it all together. Everyone begins to collect materials---fabric for the balloon, and straw to construct a basket. The resourceful children even sift through the trash until they find a gas burner. They all work together, wait for just the right wind, take off in darkness, and are ultimately reunited with family.

Readers may feel they are being asked to imagine something quite impossible. Just then the author says that although this story is make-believe, just such a successful journey was undertaken by two families crossing the Berlin Wall in a four story balloon 1979!

One caveat: there is mention of spies who keep people from trying to cross, and being "tossed into jail". Also during the escape "soldiers below fire their guns at the basket....and the children crouch down...". This seems like a book for children old enough to have everything explained to them---about freedom and oppression, etc. so the adult should be ready with more information.

I LOVED this book. My generation lived through both the building and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, so perhaps it strikes a special chord. (For adults I must recommend the film: "The Lives of Others" for more background on this topic. It has a wonderful ending.)