Let Me Fall before I Fly.
Barbra Wersba, Mercer Mayer
Hardcover
(New York Atheneum, March 15, 1971)
When the child first saw them he was not surprised, because it seemed that he had been waiting for them all his life. Rather than shock or amazement, he felt only a dim faraway warmth-and it was several minutes before he recognized it as joy. The thing that he had seen was a circus parade, and no member of the parade was more than two inches high. As it passed in front of his face the procession glittered blue and read and god, and its music was like tiny pieces of glass struck together in the sunlight.