Balloons Over Broadway

Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) - one of the four finalists for Bank Street's STEM prize - is a book that fills me with nostalgia. Not that I remember the years when lions and other animals from the Central Park zoo "marched" in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (that preceded me by several decades). But I certainly do remember a time before the marketing-driven frenzy of the event. A time when the parade was closer in feel and intent to the heartfelt way it was depicted in Miracle on 34th Street than to some Disney-driven spectacular, designed to make your kids covet mountains of souvenirs and character-driven memorabilia. But I digress.

This story follows the career of puppeteer Tony Sarg. He's literally the man behind the parade - a German immigrant who was initially hired by the great New York department store to design a "puppet parade" for its holiday window displays. Eventually, he was tapped to create the life-size parade as well, meant to cheer up Macy's host of other immigrant employees who were missing home around Christmastime.

It's a terrific subject for a kid's book, and a fun, easy-to-digest history lesson. It's chock-full of engaging collages composed of toys recreated by the author - not to mention several pages straight from Sarg's Marionette Book. And it'll have more than one kid wishing that the days of the lion procession were still with us.