Illustrated in full color. Only John Burningham--four-time winner of a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year award and twice the recipient of Britain"s prestigious Kate Greenaway Award--could have created this subtle and magical fantasy about the dreams of childhood. While hiking in the mountains with his parents, Albert tumbles off a cliff--but is saved by the cloud children who utter magic words that make him very light and keep him from falling. Albert has a wonderful time jumping, swimming, painting, and racing in the sky with the cloud children (he even walks along the jet stream of an airplane!)...until he remembers his mother and father and his own little bed at home. It takes the cloud queen, the man in the moon, and a few more magic words to return Albert to earth. Glorious mixed-media illustrations leap from the oversize pages of this delightful new book by "one of the finest and most original writers at work today" (The New Yorker). A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection.