"With a marionette, the controls are above and the puppet  hangs down...
But what if the controls were below and the puppet could rise  up?"

"There's a holdup in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights;
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights;
There's a scout troop short a child,
Krushchev's due at Idlewild!
Car 54, Where Are You?"

It was in 1961 that television coverage of the Macy's  Thanksgiving Day
Parade expanded from one hour to two. I was six in '61 and  watched the parade
on TV at my grandparents' house in Garden City. It was the  year that the
Bullwinkle J. Moose balloon made its debut, and the celebrities  participating
in the parade included the stars (and car) of Car 54, Where Are  You? as
well as Casey Stengel, manager of the new team in town, the New York  Mets.

I had no idea before reading Melissa Sweet's amazing picture  book history
of the Macy's Parade-slash-biography of puppeteer Tony Sarg, that  the parade's history goes all the way back to the Roaring Twenties when my  parents
were being born.

"Many of the people working at Macy's were immigrants, and as  the holidays
approached, they missed their own holiday traditions of music and  dancing
in the streets."

Immigrant Tony Sarg was already a renowned puppeteer  performing on
Broadway when Macy's hired him to develop moving puppets for their  holiday
windows. The company then had him help organize a parade in 1924. Their  first parades featured real animals along with the floats. And when the company  asked
Tony to replace the real animals (which could scare young spectators), it
took a few years and a few great ideas, but they ended up with the
helium-filled  balloon characters that we all know and love.

Melissa Sweet's illustrations include gouache as well as mixed  media
collages which, in turn, include puppets and toys she made herself while
creating the book. Filled with movement, bright colors, and smiles on giant
balloon figures, the excitement dances off the page.

I love how Ms. Sweet incorporates some fascinating challenges  Tony Sarg
faced in bringing his ideas to life, such as how one would create  these giant
puppets and whether the balloon creatures would fit under the  elevated
train tracks (which, back then, existed along the parade route). One of  the
coolest facts in the book is found all the way at the end, in the Author's
Note:

"But Tony could not have accomplished all he did without his talented
apprentices, some of whom went on to their own fame. One of his  apprentices,
Bill Baird, later created the puppets for the 'Lonely Goatherd'  marionette
show featured in the movie The Sound of Music. (And one of  Baird's
apprentice's was Jim Henson, who invented the Muppets.)"

BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY is a creative, joyful, and informative  story about
the origins of one of the most quintessential of American holiday
traditions.

40 pages

ISBN:  978-0547199450

Reviewed by:  Richie Partington, Librarian, California, USA

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