The Red Book - Barbara Lehman

Wordless
Houghton Mifflin, 2004
36 pgs, ages 5-8
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Red

The story is told by examining illustrations inside boxes, sometimes one box on a page, sometimes four. The illustrations are simple but not simplistic - there's plenty to see, examine, and admire.
         In the city it is snowing and a boy is on his way to school. He finds a red book in a snowbank. At school he opens it and is taken to a desert island where he sees another boy find a similar red book poking out of the sand. This boy opens it to find --- the boy in the city! They can see each other!
          After school the boy buys a huge bunch of helium balloons. They pull him up...up...up into the air and he drops the red book. The boy on the deserted island sees all of this transpiring on the pages of the red book that HE has, and is quite sad. Sad until - as we see in the pages of HIS book - his balloons floating onto the island!
          Our story ends with another boy in the city in the sonw, this time riding a bike. He finds the fallen book, sticking it under his arm and heading off along the sidewalk.
          Magical. Fun.

Goodreads: 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.Winning a Caldecott Honor for its 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.