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Written & illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Houghton Mifflin, 2011
$16.99, ages 4 and up, 40 pages.
A man with a knack for making things move turns the concept of marionettes upside down and creates one of the greatest parades on Earth.
In this marvelous tribute, Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet uses a menagerie of objects and illustrations to tell the story of Anthony "Tony" Sarg, the artist behind Macy's parade balloons.
Sweet's telling is wondrous, as she echoes Tony's creative genius with her own playful use of wood, fabrics, color and sketches.
Whimsical collages delight the eye as Sweet mixes photographs of thread spool towers, a building block tiger on wheels and other objects with watercolor illustrations.
On the opening page, the book's title hangs on a cardboard sign from antique pulleys and wire. Later, a worn book is opened flat and filled with hand-sewn puppets, sketched diagrams, swatches of fabric and buttons.
The story itself moves along with a skip and bounce, and is sprinkled here and there with curious anecdotes to amuse readers.
Sweet writes that from boyhood on Tony tinkered with simple machines. He rigged pulleys and ropes to make dolls do jumping jacks and used those same mechanisms to let out the family's chickens from their coop while he was still in bed.
Tony ran rope from the door of the chicken coop through his bedroom window, then closed that door, sprinkled feed just outside of it and went off to bed. When his alarm rang in the morning, he pulled the rope, opening the door so the chickens could wander out and eat.
When Tony was full grown, he discovered the art of marionettes was a fading, so he revived the craft with his own style of wood and cloth puppets that moved like real actors. Eventually Tony was invited to perform with his puppets on Broadway.
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