Bambert lives alone in his attic home. He feels out of place in the world and finds solace in the characters he creates in his stories. One day, he decides to send his eleven stories out into the world, to find their own (true) setting. He attaches them to paper balloons and sends them out on a windy night. The eleventh story is blank. Bambert hopes it will write itself. Gradually the stories return, with postmarks from all round the world. But Bambert's life-work is not complete until the return of the eleventh story, the fate of which is still unknown...

About the Author

Reinhardt Jung was born in Germany in 1949. He worked with an international children's organisation before becoming head of children's broadcasting in Stuttgart in 1992. He died in 1999. Anthea Bell has worked as a translator for many years, primarily from German and French. She has received a number of prizes and awards for her translation work. She lives in Cambridge. Emma Chichester Clark is one of the country's top children's books illustrators, and is a past winner of the Mother Goose award. She has been nominated for the Kate Greenaway medal (for I Love You, Blue Kangaroo!), and shortlisted for the Kurt Maschler award twice. She has also won the Premio Grizane Cavour, a prestigious literary award in Italy. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College, where she was taught by Quentin Blake.

Reviews

Gr 5-8-Bambert, a reclusive dwarf, writes stories in his Book of Wishes. After finishing 10 tales, he has room for just one more and decides that it is time to send them out into the world. He blots out all mention of time and place in the texts and ties each one to a tiny hot-air balloon along with a request that the finder return it with a note about where it landed. As the stories come back to him, each one is incorporated into the narrative along with the finders' situations. Bambert reflects on each tale, revealing some part of his soul or mentioning the lessons he has learned. Some of the selections are amusing; others are profound. After a vignette about two youngsters in war-torn Sarajevo, Bambert wonders, "How many great ideas still slumbering in small children had wars destroyed?" Finally, all of the tales but the 11th are returned. When he realizes the balloon holding the final story is stuck outside his attic window, he tries to free it, falls, and soon dies. It is up to Mr. Bloom, Bambert's landlord and only contact with the outside world, to write the last, true story, about his friend's final hours and his journey to a happier place. This very odd book is deeply affecting. The detached writing style somehow involves readers, conveying a full sense of the great spirits of the main characters. The use of the stories to illustrate Bambert's perceptions is wonderful. A truly unique and fascinating novel.-B. Allison Gray, John Jermain Library, Sag Harbor, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

This dense, at times disturbing, posthumously published work by a German author centers on "small and deformed" Bambert, who lives alone above a grocery store. Bambert "felt like a shipwrecked mariner cast up on hostile shores on the far side of a dream. This world was purgatory to him." The man rarely leaves his home, fearing that "adults would pity him and children would laugh at him." Sitting by his attic window at night, he writes stories by the light of the moon. One day Bambert tears apart the Book of Wishes containing his 10 tales and sends them into the world to "find their own settings." As to the four blank pages remaining in the book, that would become the 11th story, "he secretly hoped... [it] might actually write itself if only it tried." Bambert places the tales in separate envelopes, which he attaches to tissue-paper hot-air balloons powered by tea lights and launches from his attic window. Gradually, the stories return with postmarks from various countries and time frames, delivered to Bambert by Bloom, the grocer downstairs. Several of the tales contain intriguing twists, most notably a story of poet-prisoners in Russia and of a child in Sarajevo whose drawings seem to foretell the war's developments; but at times Bambert's commentary overshadows the tales themselves. Still, Bloom's unexpected role in the novel is a clever contrivance, and Bambert's belief in stories as living, breathing contributors to life's meaning may well intrigue book lovers and aspiring writers. Ages 10-14. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.