Miriam Roth

Miriam Roth (; February 16, 1910 – November 13, 2005) was a preeminent pioneer of Israeli preschool education, author and scholar of children's literature, with a long career as a kindergarten teacher and educator. She was born in the Austro-Hungarian town of Érsekújvár, now Nové Zámky, where the main language at the time was Hungarian, Her father, who had fought in World War I, was the principal of the town's Jewish elementary school. Her cousin Alfréd (Ali) Aladár Neuwald, who had survived the Holocaust, had lost touch with Roth, but his daughter, Ruth Neuwald Falcon, a documentary filmmaker in Seattle, searched the computer database of Jerusalem's Yad Vashem and learned that her mother's family had been murdered at Auschwitz, but also discovered information that led her to find and re-connect with Roth. Over the years, she composed and published reading lists for young children. and 6 books on education and children's literature.

"A Tale of Five Balloons" was inspired by her experience comforting her own children, after the balloons she would bring them would eventually burst.

Recognition and awards In the Israeli city of Holon, a sculpture of an enormous corncob next to a weathervane inspired by Roth's "Corn on the Cob" was installed in the Tel Giborim neighborhood.

Roth was awarded the Ze`ev Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 1990, the UNICEF Smile Award (for "A Tale of Five Balloons") in 1998, and the Bialik Prize in 2002.