Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade (2011) by Melissa Sweet is an informational picturebook of the life work of Tony Sarg.
This award winning biography gives an amazing visual and textual story of the life of Tony Sarg, the marionette creator who invented the giant balloons you see in New York's most famous parade each year. Sweet, the author, utilizes pictures that seem as if they were taken in Sarg's own workshop. The author even went so far as to study his style and create toys and items the way Sarg would have and include them in the book. The illustrations relay just as much information, showing how Sarg was dedicated to his work, as well as how exciting and colorful his work was to him.
I read Balloons Ovcer Broadway several times, and not because I didn't understand it. The story is very involving and I caught something different each time I read the book. I feel like this picturebook would appeal to my kindergartners, as well as first and second-graders. I would go so far as to say upper grades could use it as well, simply because there was information within the book that I didn't know myself!
For my kindergarten class, we would begin by taking a picture walk through the book. There would be many questions along the way, such as "What do you notice?" "What do you think this says about Tony Sarg?" "How does this make you feel?" Because the book is a straightforward timeline of his life, we could easily do a bubble timeline, placing information about Sarg in the appropriate places on our classroom timeline.
Balloons Over Broadway is a well written picturebook that conveys information on every aspect of each page. It's a must read that should be in every teacher's classroom library!
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