*Review* Goodbye, Balloon by Adam Ciccio

 

Genre: Children's 5-9

Published: March 7, 2023

Pages: 32

"No one should wait for a child to experience loss before sharing this wise, gentle book." - Kirkus Reviews

Letting go and loss can be difficult to comprehend. Goodbye Balloon will help you understand these emotions and give you insights to deal with them. 

Where does a special balloon go when it slips out of your hands? You can’t stop it, but you can wish it a beautiful journey, gliding past birds and soaring over mountains. Maybe your balloon will fly to someone else so that they can have a happy day. 

A beautifully illustrated picture book about learning to let go. For children ages 5 years and up. 

Part of the Healthy Minds series, where Adam Ciccio examines daily obstacles and the mental health of young children. Through a familiar story and helpful tips, which the author draws from his own experiences as an outpatient mental health practitioner, children and adults gain insight into what goes on in young minds and are given tools to help them cope with difficult situations.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review. 

This is a story about a girl's favorite balloon that gets away from her one day and she has to come to terms with its loss. To do that, she imagines all the adventures her balloon is going on now that it's not longer with her, as if she's flying along with it. It felt like a borderline religious message from my personal perspective (oh, it's in a better place), but it wasn't in your face, and the imagined adventures were the girls idea. 

The illustrations were very soft and cloud-like, which is fitting for a story about a balloon seeing all sorts of cool new things. There were lots of colors, but they were muted, pastel-like. Overall I give this book 3.21 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

Adam Ciccio was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was raised in Savannah, Georgia, and attended high school at St. Andrew’s School on Wilmington Island, ga. He graduated with a bachelor of arts in English from the University of New Hampshire (Durham, nh) in 2006 and with a master of science in psychological counseling at Salem State University (Salem, ma) in 2012. Adam owns an outpatient mental health practice for children and adults in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the same town in which he currently resides. He’s the author of several picture books that focus on developmental growth and self-confidence during early childhood. 

Margriet van der Berg has been drawing since she could first hold a pencil. She grew up in a small village in the Netherlands and left home at age eighteen to study textile design at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy. After working for several years, she decided to study at the Art Academy. There, her love for painting with watercolors was born. Since then, Margriet has developed into an illustrator. She sells greeting cards and art prints, and since 2020, she has also illustrated children’s books. Her first book for Clavis Publishing was When the Whales Came by Phebe Rasch.