Tunnels

November 1, 2015

Gr 4-6-The pictures are a strength of these surveys of large-scale historical and modern construction works. Bridges, for instance, begins with photos of logs across streams and goes on to views of soaring steel structures so long their ends often recede into the hazy horizon. Pyramids offers a select but varied gallery of ancient monuments, some of which are crumbled almost beyond recognition. Similarly, in Great Wall of China, readers can see stretches that have nearly vanished along with well-preserved and newly restored lengths. Tunnels is less visually impressive, as there isn't that much to see, but period photos and (for older works) imagined scenes here and in other volumes cast light on construction methods. Along with identifying, locating, and explaining salient features of each structure highlighted, the authors delve into distinctive engineering challenges, from calculating precise angles in Pyramids to considerations of torsion, wind shear, compression, and, more recently, sustainability in designing Skyscrapers and Towers. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge does get coverage in Bridges, but in general the focus is more on successes than disasters. Each volume in the series opens with a page of reading comprehension exercises and ends with both review questions and several links to web resources. VERDICT Strong, attractive options.

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