Crossing Space and Time: A Review of The Spy with the Red Balloon

Katherine Locke’s The Girl with the Red Balloon, a YA time travel that sends a teenage girl from the present day to late 1980s East Berlin and to her grandfather’s spectacular escape from the Holocaust, introduced the compelling force of the Balloonmakers. This ragtag group of geniuses save people from oppression and death, often at a very high cost, and through them, Locke explores the often-thin line between good and evil.

Ilse and Wolf Klein, the Jewish sibling protagonists of The Spy with the Red Balloon, are not official Balloonmakers, but they – and especially 16-year-old Ilse – have the ability to make magic with balloons, a flame, and equations written in their blood. Ilse, though, is still mastering her craft, and in the opening scene set in New York City’s Central Park in 1942, the balloon burns up in her hands. Still, she has attracted the attention of the US military, which needs her and her brother’s abilities to defeat the Nazis in the Second World War. Ilse goes to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she lives on her own for the first time and works with three other women on experimental weapons delivery systems. Wolf, who is 18, is dropped behind enemy lines to blow up German weapons factories, using Ilse’s equations as a guide. On his journey, he’s reunited with Max. A year earlier, the two became attracted to each other, but Wolf’s unwillingness to admit his love broke them apart. Complicating things further, within both Ilse’s and Max’s teams is a mysterious figure who travels across oceans instantaneously and leaves a trail of suspicion, recrimination, and destruction wherever he goes.

This companion to The Girl with the Red Balloon is a tautly written World War II page-turner filled with wonder, intrigue, physics puzzles, and poetic justice, with a dash of romance. Ilse and Wolf are well-drawn engaging protagonists who fail as often as they succeed but never give up. The connection to the earlier novel doesn’t become clear until the end – making this book a effective stand-alone – but fans of The Girl with the Red Balloon will have a “wow” moment when it does appear. Locke explores difficult moral issues without preaching, and for that reason the novel is an excellent choice for both teen and adult book groups. An Author’s Note addresses in detail the real events and what is invented.