On a class visit to the Empire State Building, a young boy who gets separated from his class, unknowingly crosses the line between fantasy and reality while he’s on the top floor, up among the clouds. He’s befriended by a small cloud, in fact, who whisks him away, up into the sky into a building known as Sector 7. Here stern bureaucrats submit their boring sketches of proper cloud shapes and launch the same old amorphous, cumulus masses into the skies over Manhattan. Our hero and his cloud friend, however, have other ideas and his sketches of fish catch on quickly among the clouds, much to the frustration of the bureaucrats. Weisner’s detailed watercolor paintings tell the whole story in this original, funny wordless book. (Ages 4-9)

The Caldecott Honor-winning adventure of a young boy and a mischievous cloud in a funny, touching story about art, friendship, and the weather by three-time Caldecott Medalist David Wiesner.

Only the person who gave us Tuesday could have devised this fantastic Caldecott Honor-winning tale, which begins with a school trip to the Empire State Building. There a boy makes friends with a mischievous little cloud, who whisks him away to the Cloud Dispatch Center for Sector 7 (the region that includes New York City). The clouds are bored with their everyday shapes, so the boy obligingly starts to sketch some new ones. . . . The wordless yet eloquent account of this unparalleled adventure is a funny, touching story about art, friendship, and the weather, as well as a visual tour de force.