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BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY



BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sweet, Melissa. 2011. Balloons over broadway New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. ISBN 978-0-547-19945-0

PLOT SUMMARY
How did one boy get out of chores forever? Invent a chicken-feeding system, of course! From the moment he feeds the chickens to the arrival of Garfield in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, kids will love this biography of Tony Sarg. In BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY, Melissa Sweet details his journey from farm boy to puppeteer to balloon master. As the creator of the famed Macy’s floating balloons, Sweet explains both the life of Tony Sarg and his ingenious method for bringing puppets to life. Along the way, kids will love Sweet’s illustrations of Sarg’s ideas, especially the upside-down marionettes which grace the final pages of the book.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY, Melissa Sweet triumphantly serves as both author and illustrator. Since BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY is a biography, it is organized chronologically over the course of Tony Sarg’s life. Each period of his life builds upon the previous years to show the progression of his expertise in the field of puppeteering. Sweet launces the book with Tony Sarg’s enduring understanding of the world:

“Every little movement has a meaning of its own.” Tony Sarg

Her writing and illustrations mimic this understanding. As an author, she describes Tony Sarg’s life in child-friendly terms, yet introduces higher-level vocabulary, like pulley, with the support of interesting visuals. For instance, the drawing of Sarg’s chicken-feeding system shows not only the pulley system, but labels the steps correctly. The vocabulary is further supported by the illustration of six-year-old Tony feeding the chickens from the comfort of his bed. Similar drawings, complete with arrows and labels, serve as reference aids at multiple points throughout the book. 

As an illustrator, Melissa Sweet features gouache watercolors, collage and mixed media. She wastes no space, even using the endpapers. The front papers describe Sarg’s toy collection and the back papers are a reprint of the New York Times balloon ad from November 30, 1933. Kids will especially love the mixed media, which includes puppets, blocks, buttons and pulleys. It is a feast for the eyes! Because there are so many facets of artistic design, this book lends itself to in-depth study of nonfiction text features, like photographs, caption, drawings and labels. Toward the end of the book, Sweet illustrates the parade balloons on a grand scale. The balloons fill the pages and text is minimized. This balance lends support to the idea of scale for the balloons, allowing them to fill the space and tell their own story. There is even a treat for the reader when the first balloon is illustrated--you need to reorient the book for vertical viewing. Kids will love this unusual use of space in a picture book!

There is an Author’s Note at the end of the book. Replete with playfulness, it is different from the typical author’s note and kids are more likely to read it as a result. Sweet continues to toy with space and even includes her thought process about creating the artwork for the book. She also includes a bibliography of sources used to research the story. The bibliography and quotations lend credibility to the accuracy of the story and give the reader a jumping off point to learn more.

BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY captures the imagination of Tony Sarg and inspires imagination in the reader. Sweet strikes the right balance between text and art, supporting complex ideas with striking visuals. Kids will want to break out the craft supplies and begin creating puppets!

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

PUBLISHER WEEKLY: “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).”

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: Sweet's whimsical mixed-media collages, embellished with little dolls she made herself out of odds and ends, reinforce the theme that, for Sarg, work was play.

CONNECTIONS
  • Read this book before Thanksgiving and then have kids watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade Thanksgiving morning. They’ll be able to view the strings which attach to the balloon puppets and are controlled by balloon handlers.
  • Guide students through a picture walk of the book. The illustrations serve as stories themselves. Challenge students to find all the elements of a page’s illustration, from the pictures supporting the story to the graphic elements to the drawings. Examine all the layers.
  • Build a puppet! This book begs students to build their own puppets using child-friendly project ideas like a Paper Bag Rod Puppet or Shadow Puppets.
  • 2012 Robert F. Sibert Medal Winner
  • 2012 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award

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