The Pink Bouncing Ball (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780999275900)

Alan Balsam grew up in New York City in the 1940s, in Ozone Park, Queens. It was a period that may be called a "Great Historical Divide." Looking backward in the century, we faced three dark abysses: two world wars and the Great Depression in between. Looking forward, there was the hope of recovery and building for the future. His family and the place in which they lived also spanned important sociocultural and geographic divides. The family was descended from immigrants to this country from Eastern Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. He lived on the north side of Ozone Park in a suburban area with his parents, Paul and Caroline Balsam, who were born in New York City in the first decade of the century, and brother Joel, but he spent a lot of time on the Balsams' family dairy farm in a semirural area on the south side near Jamaica Bay. As a child in that era, he adventured in New York's developing towns at a time when simple joys, such as the pink bouncing ball, brought children together and shaped their experience of childhood.