Balloons over
Broadway: the true story of the puppeteer of Macy’s Parade
Citation:
Sweet, M. (2011). Balloons over Broadway: the true
story of the puppeteer of Macy's Parade. New York: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company.
Plot Summary:
BALLOONS
OVER BROADWAY: THE TRUE STORY OF THE PUPPETEER OF MACY’S PARADE is a biography by Melissa Sweet about
Tony Sarg. This biography focuses on his journey from boyhood when he was
interested in how things worked to his ideas of how to float puppets down
Broadway in New York City. As a child Tony was full of ideas, he created a
pulley system to feed his chickens without getting out of bed in the morning.
When Tony was a young man he moved to London and was aghast to learn that no
one was making marionettes for children anymore, so he rectified that and word
began to spread about Tony’s amazing puppets. After he moved from London to New
York, Macy’s commandeered Tony to design a “puppet parade” for its windows.
Macy’s approached Tony about making a parade for the immigrants of the company
based on the street dancing and carnivals from around the world, and the parade
was such a success that it became an annual tradition that happens every year
on Thanksgiving. As the parade grew, so did the attractions, but Macy’s began
to bring real animals that frightened the children. Tony was recruited again to
come up with a solution: from there was born the puppets controlled from the streets.
After few years of trial and error with the puppets, and the parade was a
rousing success with each new experiment to make the balloons easier to handle,
and so we have it: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Critical Analysis:
The first impression of this
book BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY is the illustrations on the front cover. The book
is done in scrapbook like art with clip out letters and pictures. The drawings
are phenomenal with a mixture of characters and claymation objects. The
biography itself is short enough to keep a child interested while long enough
to touch on a person’s life. The backgrounds of the pages are each different
colors with some of the pages focusing on the larger picture and others serving
as simply a background color. Melissa Sweet does an excellent job of switching
between paragraphs and choosing words and phrases to stand out. The ideas of
showing Tony Sarg’s thought processes was simply wonderful and will make
children want to find out how things work and are made.
Reviews:
New York Times Book Review: “Sweet’s brilliant combination of collage, design,
illustration and text give Balloons Over Broadway an amazing richness. . . [no
one] will ever see the parade in the same way.”
Booklist: “A
joyous piece of nonfiction that informs and delights in equal parts.”
Kirkus Reviews: “This
clever marriage of information and illustration soars high.”
Connections:
-
Other Caldecott Honor Winners:
o
THIS IS NOT MY HAT by John Klassen
o
A BALL FOR DAISY by Chris Raschka
-
Other Bluebonnet Nominees:
o
THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate
o
WHATEVER AFTER #1: FAIREST OF ALL by Sarah
Mlynowski
All reviews courtesy
of Amazon.com
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