Pop's Bridge

June 1, 2006
Gr 1-4 -Robert and his friend Charlie Shu spend many an afternoon at Fort Point watching from afar as their dads work on the crews building the Golden Gate Bridge. Robert -s father is a high-iron man, a skywalker, and, in his son -s eyes, has a far more important and dangerous job than the painting Charlie -s dad does. When Robert -s mom gives the youngsters a jigsaw puzzle based on an artist -s rendering of the yet-to-be completed bridge, Robert hides a piece to give his father the honor of completing the puzzle. When a scaffold falls and 10 men die, however, he realizes that the work is equally dangerous for all involved. While the two families are celebrating the completion of the bridge, he cuts the last puzzle piece, offering half to each dad. -Finish it. It -s your bridge. It belongs to both of you, - he says. The text is followed by an author -s note recounting the Golden Gate -s history. Payne -s striking mixed-media illustrations bleed off the pages and offer interesting views of the -impossible bridge - -against a star-filled sky, through a binocular lens. The spread featuring delighted throngs, both boys front and center, walking across the bridge at its opening and that of the dads, index fingers meeting across the page to complete the puzzle, say more poignantly than words that people of different backgrounds can come together to accomplish the unthinkable. Deborah Hopkinson -s "Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building" (Random, 2006) features more skywalkers at their dangerous jobs." -Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2006
K-Gr. 3. The bridge is San Francisco's fabled Golden Gate, and Robert's father is helping to build it. Pop is a high-iron worker, what folks called a "skywalker." And, in the year 1937, he is one of more than a thousand men who are engaged in constructing the "impossible bridge." Robert's friend Charlie Shu's father, a painter, is also involved, but Robert secretly feels Pop's job is more important than Mr. Shu's. Then an accident forces him to rethink things. Distinguished by its lovely, understated text and Payne's lavish and affectionate mixed-media pictures, this picture book does a quietly successful job of humanizing one of the most important feats of civil engineering in American history. For more about skywalkers, recommend Deborah Hopkinson's " Sky Boys" (2006), about workers who built the Empire State Building.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)