Thanksgiving parade balloons are mesmerizing. They are giant and they are somehow maneuvered around buildings and light posts by a group of people with giant ropes. When I was small, I was so excited to see the Big Bird balloon in the parade, that I took photos of the television screen with our family polaroid. The pictures were blurry but that’s ok, it matches the memory…a bit fuzzy but still special to me.
As a child someone told me that many years ago, at the end of the parade, the balloons were released. If you found one, you could return it for a reward. I imagined walking outside my house and seeing a deflated giant parade balloon in our backyard. It never happened (as they stopped releasing the balloons many, many years before my lifetime, but I still loved to imagine finding one). Since I couldn’t find a released balloon, my next idea….someday being a balloon handler. A few years ago, I got to live out that childhood dream and take a giant dragon for a walk through city streets and it was just as awesome as I imagined it would be.
So my Thanksgiving book recommendation this year….Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet. I love this book for both the story and the illustrations. In this beautiful picture book, we meet Tony Sarg, who invented the giant ballons we see in the Thanksgiving Parade. Sarg had a determination and enthusiasm for his idea of creating these giant balloons that is contagious. Young readers will cheer him on as he works on his idea and it’s exciting to see it come to life.
While this book is geared towards children, it was delightful to read as an adult. I learned new things about the parade, and I look at the parade in a new way after reading this. I highly recommend this book!