The Red Book by Barbara Lehman

From the Publisher

This book is about a book. A magical red book without any words. When you turn the pages you’ll experience a new kind of adventure through the power of story.
In illustrations of rare detail and surprise, The Red Book crosses oceans and continents to deliver one girl into a new world of possibility, where a friend she’s never met is waiting. And as with the best of books, at the conclusion of the story, the journey is not over.

Publishers Weekly

Lehman's (Moonfall) ink-and-wash panels show snow falling on a drab city. The square angles of the buildings counter the rounded doll-like features of a girl walking along the street; the delicate blues and reds of her clothes temper the grays of the city. The girl spies a red book sticking out of a snowbank. Once at school, she peeps into her treasure. The book's pictures show successively closer views of a tropical paradise. Green islands on a map loom, a single beach comes into focus, and a small black point grows to become a boy. As she watches, the boy finds a red book just like hers. But when he opens his, he sees a panorama of a city, a closer view of some windows and, at last, the girl in her classroom. Now the boy and girl can see each other; they stare in surprise, then smile. After school, the girl buys a bunch of balloons and sets sail for the boy's island. She drops the red book as she ascends; but it turns out she doesn't need the book to reach him. Next, a stranger on a bicycle picks up the girl's book and pedals away, glancing back with suspicion. It's the only moment that disturbs the book's otherwise perfect equilibrium, in which summer mirrors winter, two children join hands across a great distance, and the tropics provide a refuge from civilization. As visually uncluttered as it is conceptually rich, Lehman's red book is a little treasure of its own. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz - Children's Literature

This little book, with its shiny red jacket and textured red cover, tells a magical and wordless tale about another red-covered book that a young girl finds in the snow. When she opens it in school, it seems to show her an island on which a young boy is discovering a red book in the sand. When he opens his book, he sees her city and the astonished girl, looking at him just as he is looking at her. Leaving school, she purchases two enormous bunches of balloons which carry her up into the sky. She drops the book, open to the page where the boy is shown. She then appears there on the page, carried by the balloons, to the boy's apparent delight. Then the closed book is found and picked up by a bicyclist, for an ending that leaves us to ponder what has happened and what might happen in the future. The visual narrative is told in boxes of several sizes containing rather simply conceived scenes, black outlined figures and objects filled with naturalistic colors and done in watercolor, gouache, and ink. It is easy to follow the adventure, soaring over the city's buildings to share the boy's reception of his drop-in visitor, then puzzling over what is next as the book is carried off. The powerful story requires no words at all. 2004, Houghton Mifflin Company, Ages 4 to 8.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 6-This perfectly eloquent wordless book tells the complex story of a reader who gets lost, literally, in a little book that has the magic to move her to another place. On her winter-gray walk to school, a young girl spies a book's red cover sticking out of a snowdrift and picks it up. During class, she opens her treasure and finds a series of square illustrations showing a map, then an island, then a beach, and finally a boy. He finds a red book buried in the sand, picks it up, opens it, and sees a sequence of city scenes that eventually zoom in on the girl. As the youngsters view one another through the pages of their respective volumes, they are at first surprised and then break into smiles. After school, the girl buys bunches of helium balloons and floats off into the sky, accidentally dropping her book along the way. It lands on the street below and through its pages readers see the girl reach her destination and greet her new friend, and it isn't long before another child picks up that magical red book. Done in watercolor, gouache, and ink, the simple, streamlined pictures are rife with invitations to peek inside, to investigate further, and-like a hall of mirrors-reflect, refract, repeat, and reveal. Lehman's story captures the magical possibility that exists every time readers open a book-if they allow it: they can leave the "real world" behind and, like the heroine, be transported by the helium of their imaginations.-Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CT Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A charming wordless tale about a magical red book and two unnamed children. One child (quietly androgynous though called a girl by the flap copy) finds a red book lying in the city snow. She brings it to school and opens it to find a map of a warm island somewhere far away. Through a series of frames, the picture zooms in to show her a child on that island, also finding a red book (buried in the sand) and viewing the first child's snowy city. Now his pictures zoom in and he finds her looking at him in the book and then out through the classroom window. They can see each other! After school, a purchase of many balloons carries the city child off to the island to meet her new friend who sees that she's left the city and then, there she is-as seen in her book lying on the city sidewalk where she's dropped it. As it closes, a new city child, who will presumably have an adventure too, picks it up. Simple, nicely drawn, and a friendly toast to the imagination. (Picture book. 3-5)

Product Details