Module 11 * Informational Books * March 31- April 6

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of the Macy's Parade

by 

Melissa Sweet

Bibliography: Sweet, M. (2011). Balloons over Broadway. New York, NY: HMH Books for Young Readers.

Summary: This is the story of Tony Sarg (rhymes with aarg) who is the mind behind the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons.  It tells about where he got his start (London), how he began (making marionettes) and how he came up with the idea for the huge balloons that have becomes iconic (he started with horse-drawn floats and real animals that were too scary for the  children).  It documents the creative process and stages he went through before the parade became the highlight of the Thanksgiving season that it is today.  

My Take: This book is fascinating!  The information is interesting and relevant and the way the book is put together- the mixed media art- makes you feel like you are looking at one of Sarg's idea books!  This is a great book to use to introduce informational texts to kids.  

Reviews: 

This bright, brimming picture biography commemorates Tony Sarg, a brilliant, self-taught artist whose innovative heliumballoons delighted legions of Macy's parade watchers from 1928 on.

Sweet sketches Sarg's career as a puppeteer and marionette-maker. Moving from London to New York City, where his marionettes performed on Broadway, Sarg engineered mechanical storybook characters for Macy's "Wondertown" holiday windows. In 1924, he created floats and costumes for the first Macy's parade, which celebrated both immigrant and American holiday traditions. When the annual parade's lions and tigers (borrowed from the Central Park Zoo) frightened children, Macy's commissioned Sarg to replace them. Ever innovative, Sarg eventually utilized rubberized silk and helium to create larger, lighter balloons that could be controlled from below. Sweet's charming mixed-media layouts form a playful bridge between her creative process and Sarg's. She fashioned whimsical toys from painted blocks, buttons and fabric, combining them in photo-collages with old books, cut paper, imagined sketches for Sarg's projects, watercolor images of parade scenes and much more. Endpapers inform and delight, too, with excerpts from a 1929 book about Sarg's marionettes and a front-page parade invitation in the 1933 New York Times. Backmatter is also a collage of treats, with an author's note appending further biographical details and comments about the art.

This clever marriage of information and illustration soars high. (bibliography of adult sources, quote sources, acknowledgements, period photo) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)

Balloons over Broadway (review). (2011). Kirkus Reviews, 35(17), 1607.

Tony Sarg (1880-1942, "rhymes with aargh!"), the man who invented the giant balloons of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, has found a worthy biographer in Caldecott Honoree Sweet (A River of Words). With lighthearted watercolors, fanciful scrapbooking, and collaged typography, Sweet shows how Sarg, a self-taught immigrant, combined an indomitable curiosity with an engineer's know-how and a forever-young imagination. The story walks readers through each stage of Sarg's development as a master of puppetry--his childhood fascination with mechanics and marionettes, his first big break as a developer of window displays for Macy's, and his early earthbound parade creations (essentially air-filled rubber bags that were steered down the street). And then comes the light-bulb moment: "With a marionette, the controls are above and the puppet hangs down…" writes Sweet. "But what if the controls were below and the puppet could rise up?" The rush that comes from inspiration, the cliffhanger moments of creation, the sheer joy of building something and watching it delight the multitudes--Sweet captures it all in what is truly a story for all ages. Ages 4-8.

Balloons over Broadway: The true story of the puppeteer of Macy's parade (review). (2011). Publishers Weekly 258(32). 

Use in a School Library: It would be lots of fun to begin a unit on informational texts with this book right before Thanksgiving break.  The kids' "homework" over the break would be to watch the parade on tv and share some of the facts they have learned with family and friends who are there at the time.  Being the one to give the adults new information about the parade (there were lots of things I didn't know before I read this book) will be an awesome hook into the world of informational books!  Then, after the break, groups would share their experiences.  Looking through some good, interesting informational books that the librarian has selected would be next, and then they could choose one to create a presentation of information on.  These could be shared with others.