Roger interviewed Melissa Sweet on Sunday, June 24, 2012, at the ALA Convention in Anaheim. Melissa Sweet’s book Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade is the 2012 Sibert Award winner, and she created the cover illustration for the July/August issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
I read this book for my Education Literature class for my Masters in reading. Then I took it straight to the classroom. I was able to use the comic style graphics to engage students and really interest them in writing their own biography in the same format. What I loved about this s tory is that it not only told a great story about Tony Sarg (personal narrative) and it also presents non-fiction features, with graphs, charts, captions, headings, maps etc. This was a great book to read!