Penelope’s Balloons, a sublime color hug about change and habits.

Penelope’s Balloons, an illustrated book about a girl and her red balloons is a strong metaphor about OCD and overcoming aspects of it.

Penelope’s Balloons is a brightly-colored illustrated book about an anthropomorphic elephant and the 10 red balloons she always carries around.

Penelope is a friendly and quiet girl who happily jaunts around town with her ten, red balloons. She’s known for this and has come to depend on them being around at all times. How will she respond when a massive storms hits the park where she’s playing and blows her balloons all over town?

This illustrated book has shades of each of those descriptions. Which one you identify the most with depends on the young readers in your audience or your life. The illustrations in Penelope’s Balloons are big and command attention. They have a manic sense of happiness early in the book when Penelope is playing with her balloons or has them nearby. They help her when she’s hoping during recess and make her easy to spot when she’s walking around, but she does have to be careful of her anthropomorphic friends with spikes or scales that could otherwise pop them. There is nothing else red in the book, so when we see her balloons they always dominate the attention of the pages.

When the storm comes, the wind whirls her balloon in a tizzy, eventually out of her hands and to parts unknown. Penelope is beyond distraught and is briefly comforted by one of her friends. She’s relieved to find one of her balloons in a tree when she gets home. However, she over compensates her levels of safety and concern by smothering the balloon and eventually popping it. It’s here when her parents see the remaining nine balloons spread out through her backyard and she evolves her play habits to where her pokey brimmed friends can play with her as well.

Change is hard. You can tell elementary school ages that it’s difficult to break habits or change patterns that aren’t beneficial to them. You can tell them, but since you’re over 19 and children know everything they won’t believe you. That’s why illustrated books are great tools at teaching ages five through eight lessons of any sort. The lesson in Penelope’s Balloons is soft and open to different interpretations. It’s about OCD and how to bounce back when your usual patterns go off of the track. People are different and have personality quirks that we can’t control or don’t like, but we can all be friends and have fun. That final one is especially important to remember during election years.

The story behind Penelope’s Balloons is an illustrated Rorshach Test of sorts. You’ll read the book to a group of first graders and they’ll view the book from one of a couple of different vantage points. Regardless of what camp they put it in they’ll enjoy the story. They’ll marvel at the details in the art, subconsciously realize that the red balloons really pop when set against the Earth tones of the rest of the book. As with other great illustrated books they’ll hopefully take the lessons that Penelope, the protagonist, encounters and apply them to their own.

Penelope’s Balloons is by Brooke Bourgeois and is available on Union Square Kids.

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