Illustrator Leads an Artful Tour

Some of Robin Preiss Glasser’s fondest memories of growing up are of the times her parents took her and her four sisters to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

“They’d pack us in the car dressed in our nicest outfits, with patent-leather Mary Janes and bows in our hair,” recalls Glasser, 42, a Newport Beach children’s book illustrator. “It would be a big, exciting day going to the museum. We’d always stop and have a Sabrette at the hot dog stand out front.”

Three decades later, Glasser and her youngest sister, Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman, have returned to the Met, this time via a whimsical children’s book that is earning raves for its energy and charm.

“You Can’t Take a Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum” (Dial Books for Young Readers), Weitzman and Glasser’s first collaboration, is a wordless adventure through the streets of New York and a look at some of the world’s great works of art.

A Junior Library Guild outstanding selection, the slim volume has a simple premise: A little girl who is visiting the art museum with her grandmother is prevented from taking her yellow balloon inside. A friendly guard ties the balloon to a railing and promises to watch it for her. But a pigeon picks at the string, setting in motion a frantic dash through the streets of New York as the guard tries to snare the errant balloon.

Meanwhile, the little girl, oblivious to the madcap chase, tours the museum’s Monets, Pollocks and classic Greek art.

Glasser’s illustrations are detailed pen-and-ink drawings, with the central action highlighted in color. What makes the book unusual is that not only are full-color reproductions of 18 works of art from the Metropolitan’s collection incorporated into Glasser’s drawings, but also that the action in the guard’s chase mimics the artwork the girl is viewing.

When the balloon floats through a snooty New York eatery, the girl is looking at Mary Cassatt’s “Lady at the Tea Table.” When the balloon sails through a bridge in Central Park, the girl is examining Claude Monet’s “Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lilies.”

Weitzman, 34, an interior designer, came up with the idea for the book after her 3-year-old niece was prevented from taking her balloon into the Met. Weitzman, intent on writing a children’s book, has been pitching ideas to her sister for years, Glasser said.

“I’ve been saying, ‘That’s nice. Work on it, work on it,’ ” Glasser said. “But when she told me this idea, I just got chills. I thought it was a fabulous way to bring the classic art of the Met to children in a fun, approachable way.”

“You Can’t Take A Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum” is available in bookstores and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art stores in Century City, Pasadena and Costa Mesa. Glasser will sign from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Pasadena Metropolitan Museum of Art Store, 39 N. Fair Oaks Ave.