When sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum accidentally time-travels via red balloon to 1988 East Berlin, she's caught up in a conspiracy of history and magic. She meets members of an underground guild in East Berlin who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the Wall-but even to the balloon makers, Ellie's time travel is a mystery. When it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history, Ellie must risk everything-including her only way home-to stop the process.
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[My first day in Berlin was what my Saba would have called a balloon day] ***(Albert Whitman & Company, 10 November 2017, ebook, 291 pages, Big Library Read)
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This is my first time reading the author.
The Girl with the Red Balloon is highly inventive and a lot of fun to read. I didn't realise for a few chapters that Ellie had travelled to 1988, I thought she'd gone further back in time so I was a bit confused, but that's my fault for not paying attention. The book uses different narrators. I thought this worked really, offering different viewpoints on what was happening. I loved the idea of the novel. Who doesn't love magic balloons? The book starts to get a bit dark towards the end when Ellie realises why her time travel is so surprising to people and just what dark events are unwinding around her. This a cracking read with an original premise.