Children's Books discussion

In April our theme will be Building and Engineering. I'm thinking mostly civil engineering. Please nominate books fitting that theme here. This could encompass both fiction and non-fiction picture books and it would be great if we could have an age range from toddler to the older picture book crowd.

It's now time to VOTE for the six books you would most like to read with the group in April. Please choose from our official nominations (messages 2-12) and post your selections in a comment below. Votes will be accepted until March 19th. Thank you!

Rosie Revere, Engineer

Fort-Building Time

The Construction Alphabet Book

A Place to Start a Family: Poems about Creatures That Build

Pop's Bridge

Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering!

Build, Beaver, Build!: Life at the Longest Beaver Dam

Mr. Ferris and His Wheel

The Secret Subway

Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece

Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton

The Marvelous Thing That Came from a Spring: The Accidental Invention of the Toy That Swept the Nation by Gilbert Ford

Pop!: The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy

Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building

Castle: How It Works (this looks good and for younger children)

Jet Plane: How It Works

My library has these that look interesting, for children age 7 and up:

Buildings

Building

Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building

Totally Amazing Facts about Stuff We've Built

Building Structures and Towers

These look like they might be for younger children:

Building

Busy Builders, Busy Week!

Under Construction

How to Build a House: A colossal adventure of construction, teamwork, and friendship

Spot the Bird on the Building Site: Packed with things to spot and facts to discover!

And a fiction book: Palazzo Inverso

I'd love to read Rosie Revere, Engineer with my daughter but there is a 10 month wait for this one!!!!

This is what is available in my neck of the woods.....

Biographies of engeneers

Brunel the Great Engineer written by Sally Hewitt.

Avoid Being Leonardo Da Vinci!


Engineering non fiction

Great Scottish Feats Of Engineering And Building Bill Fletcher ; illustrated by John Marshall.

Anything by Tammy Enz for example:
Building vehicles that roll
Building vehicles that fly
Building bridges

Darkest Depths and Other Underground Megastructures by Ian Graham.

A few that my preschooler and I have read and enjoyed:

How a House Is Built

Dig, Dogs, Dig: A Construction Tail

Build, Dogs, Build: A Tall Tail

The House in the Meadow

Construction

Iggy Peck, Architect

Thank you all for the wonderful nominations! I'm excited about this! :-)

It's now time to VOTE for the six books you would most like to read with the group in April. Please choose from our official nominations (messages 2-12) and post your selections in a comment below. Votes will be accepted until March 19th. Thank you!

Elspeth wrote: "I'd love to read Rosie Revere, Engineer with my daughter but there is a 10 month wait for this one!!!!"

Oh, bummer! My son and I really enjoyed Iggy Peck, Architect.

Fort-Building Time
Mr. Ferris and His Wheel
The Secret Subway
Build, Beaver, Build!: Life at the Longest Beaver Dam
A Place to Start a Family: Poems about Creatures That Build
Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building

I can't get any of the books nominated by anyone else. Perhaps you, Kathryn, can pick one or two off my nomination list that will fill in a gap for older or younger children or that are available to you. But no worries if you love/ can work with everyone else's actual votes.

Cheryl wrote: "I can't get any of the books nominated by anyone else. Perhaps you can pick one or two off my nomination list that will fill in a gap for older or younger children or that are available to you. But..."

I am sorry that none of the books for which I voted you can get at your local library, but I only voted for books that are actually available at my local library, and while I would have loved to pick some your choices, none are on Hamilton Public Library shelves and ILL often takes at least a month (and I did check). I might check if Sky Boys is cheaply available for purchase, as it does interest me enough to consider buying it if the price is right (no pun intended).

So I checked Sky Boys, and did decide to buy a cheap copy of it and thus changed my vote (hope the book does not take too long to arrive as I bought a cheap copy with standard shipping).

Oh, sorry, didn't mean for anyone to reconsider their own votes. I'll amend my comment to make it clear that I'm addressing Kathryn.

Seriously, no problem if I can't get anything chosen. It's not as if I know a child to share these with, or ever will, nor do I have a particular personal interest in the subject.

Cheryl wrote: "Oh, sorry, didn't mean for anyone to reconsider their own votes. I'll amend my comment to make it clear that I'm addressing Kathryn.

Seriously, no problem if I can't get anything chosen. It's not..."

Well, I am glad that I found a copy of Sky Boys as it looks a bit more interesting from the book description that Pop's Bridge.

Thanks for letting me know, Cheryl. I'll see how the votes come in and try to include at least one of your nominations :-)

Rosie Revere Engineer
Fallingwater
Sky Boys
Mr Ferris and His Wheel
Construction

Rosie Revere
Fallingwater
Sky Boys

**Sorry, my littlest is sick so I don't have time to tally the votes right now. I will leave the voting open for now and will hope to tally and post the winners tomorrow.**

(hugs)

Kathryn wrote: "**Sorry, my littlest is sick so I don't have time to tally the votes right now. I will leave the voting open for now and will hope to tally and post the winners tomorrow.**"

Hope he is feeling better soon, this winter has been horrible for colds and the like.

Sorry he is ill. :-(
We have whooping cough and viral croup going round our school, touch would the little one hasn't brought it home...... yet.

Time to squeeze my vote in :-)

If no-one else fancies Avoid being Leonado Davinci then I'll join the waiting list for Rosie Revere and join the discussion when I eventually get my hands on it (if the thread is still open that is !)

Elspeth wrote: "Sorry he is ill. :-(
We have whooping cough and viral croup going round our school, touch would the little one hasn't brought it home...... yet.

Time to squeeze my vote in :-)

If no-one else fa..."

All these diseases that we thought were gone seem to be coming back.

Threads remain open forever! They sometimes get archived to a folder out-of-the-way, but they're not closed!

Thank you for all the well wishes. My little one is doing much better. It's never fun to have a little one ill, but we've been really fortunate this season that we escaped the really bad flu so I'm counting my blessings.

Here are the books selected. I tried to pull at least one from each person who voted so I hope all of you are able to obtain at least a few of them. I'm really happy that my library actually has all of them this time (and I found many more to add to my to-read list thanks to the great nominations.) Thank you all for participating! :-)

Fort-Building Time
Mr. Ferris and His Wheel
Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building
Rosie Revere, Engineer
Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece
Construction

This list will remain open to become the Master List and General Discussion for picture books about building and engineering.

I forgot to include this amazing picture book about a man who uses modern technology and construction vehicles like bulldozers and cement trucks (which one usually considers as anti-environmental protection) to reclaim and rehabilitate a prairie creek that had been drained and filled in to make a corn field, Creekfinding: A True Story (really a great story, inspiring, hopeful, with lovely wood cut illustrations).

Found these two picture books at a local bookshop today and they do look interesting:

Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects

Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers

And there also seems to be a third volume on skyscrapers, which the bookstore did not have on hand: Who built that? Skyscrapers: an introduction to skyscrapers and their architects

Thanks, Gundula!
:-)

Kathryn wrote: "Thanks, Gundula!
:-)"

They are a bit longer, but pretty minimalist in many ways. Will post my reviews once I have actually read them.

Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers

Didier Cornille's (author and illustrator) and Yolanda Stern Broad's (translator) Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers (the French language original title being Tous les ponts sont dans la nature) is interesting, exceedingly educational, evocatively readable and thankfully also not generally replete with too much architectural and construction specific jargon, making this book while perhaps not necessarily suitable and interesting to and for very young toddlers also something for parents, caregivers, teachers to consider sharing with construction and building interested younger children who are not as yet independent readers. For if one were to read Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers with or to children, kept the readings to manageable chunks of information and did not attempt to read the entire ninety odd pages at once (which is very easily accomplished, as there are, indeed, ten specific chapters for each of the ten featured bridges), Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers could, in my opinion and indeed prove a delightful, pleasurable, as well as enlightening reading or perhaps listening (as well as learning) experience, as both presented narrative and accompanying illustrations are in my humble opinion perfectly suited to one another, with the author's (and by extension of course also the translator's) detailed but simply delineated and well organised printed words equally complimented by the accompanying images that are delightful, visually detailed, often actually even somewhat resembling bona-fide construction and building (architect) blueprints (with the small caveat that Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers is designed to be read upside-down so to speak, with the spine of the book on top, a bit annoying and difficult perhaps, but really and truly the only way to adequately depict the featured bridges aesthetically and visually).

Highly recommended, and the one main and sadly unfortunate reason that my ranking is only three stars is that for me personally, the fact that Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers includes NO biographical information whatsoever, no list of books for further study and research, is simply too much of a serious academic shortcoming to be in any manner ignored (as the fact that Who Built That? Bridges: An Introduction to Ten Great Bridges and Their Designers is indeed completely non-fictional, is therefore based on historical facts, on realities and thus also on the author's, on Didier Cornille's own research, at least for and to me, this makes biographical lists and source citations not just desirable but in fact absolutely intellectually necessary).

Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects

Although Didier Cornille'sModern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects is narrationally and illustratively set up in very much the same fashion as his book on bridges (with even the original French language titles being almost verbatim, except that of course, in this here case, modern houses and not bridges are being described), for Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects it unfortunately does not indicate whether Yolanda Stern Broad has once again acted as translator (and while indeed this perhaps could more than likely be the case, I cannot at all be sure and thus do not really want to speculate all too much).

Conceptualised as an introduction to modern houses and the architects who designed them, who had them built (usually for clients, but there are also a few examples of architects designing for their own and private use), from the 1924 Schröder House by Gerrit Rietveld (where especially inside, everything is movable) to Sarah Wigglesworth's and Jeremy Till's 2002 Straw House (a truly "green house" in London, England), with Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects, author/illustrator Didier Cornille engagingly presents ten famous, ten internationally known modern domiciles and their respective designers (including of course Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Fallingwater and Mies Van der Rohe's minimalist Farnsworth House, but for me personally a bit frustrating and sadly, ignoring Austrian architect/artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and his colourful houses and apartment blocks, which I for one have always admired, considering how against the so-called straight line they are, with curves, with external structures that actually seem to work design-wise when one really wonders how they ever could and should).

Textually dense but nevertheless penned in a simple and therefore always easy to understand and comprehend syntactic style, each of the ten example houses is briefly described (why and especially how each of them was built, as well as how they appear both on the outside and inside, with author and illustrator Didier Cornille's accompanying pictures, with his visual images providing not only an aesthetically stunning and pleasing compliment to the presented, the featured printed words, but with Cornille's illustrations often if not actually usually feeling as though one is looking at actual blueprints, actual architectural designs, with an added and appreciated bonus that Didier Cornille's also shows other famous building projects designed by the ten architects he has showcased in Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects).

Now with regard to age suitability, Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects is in my opinion generally meant for older children above the age of eight or nine (with no upper age limit). However, if one were reading this book with or to children (and kept the readings to manageable chunks, in other words, if one did not read the entire eighty odd pages in one sitting), Modern Houses: Who Built That? An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects is also a tome for parents to consider using with and for younger children who are not quite as yet independent readers (especially if said children have shown an interest in construction, building and/or architecture). Four stars for the winning and successful marriage of text and image, although I am frustratingly forced to lower my star ranking to three stars once more, as sadly, and just like with his otherwise so excellent book on bridges, Didier Cornille has again with his Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern House and Their Architects NOT included a bibliographical list of works consulted, of works cited, of suggestions for further study and reading, and for and to me, considering that this is an entirely non fiction account, a bibliography would not only be appreciated but is something absolutely necessary, totally required (but still, I do indeed highly recommend Modern Houses: Who Built That?: An Introduction to the Modern Hosue and Their Architects, as the book itself is spectacular, and really, the intended audience, older children with an interest in building and construction, would most likely not even care that the book lacks citations and bibliographical details).

Two longer building books for older children are David Macaulay's Castle and Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction. But while I love the illustrations, I have found the text a bit dragging for a fictional account, and considering that the books both strive to educate and read more like non fiction than fiction, there really should have been bibliographies with suggestions for further reading included, especially for Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction, as the text is so clearly based on Chartres.

Construction Zone by Cheryl Willis Hudson

This rather large book has large, clear photos, with a text that is short and simple enough to read to pre-school children, and that elementary students can read on their own.

The Horn Book magazine highlights relevant books at this link,
https://www.hbook.com/2018/05/choosin...
including:

Bernhardt, Carolyn Engineer It! Bridge Projects
Gr. K–3 32 pp. ABDO/Super SandCastle

Bernhardt, Carolyn Engineer It! Dam Projects
Gr. K–3 32 pp. ABDO/Super SandCastle

Who Built That? Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects

Although Didier Cornile's picture book on skyscrapers (Who Built That? Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects, originally published in French as Toutes les gratte-ciels sont dans la nature) is set up and conceptualised both narrationally and illustratively in pretty much the same manner as his tomes on bridges and modern houses, I do have to admit that I for one have found Who Built That?: Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects not nearly as enjoyable and as readable as the latter two (which I both appreciated and indeed also perused with very much pleasure and personal engagement), mostly due to the fact that aside from the first inclusion, aside from Gustave Eiffel's famous 1889 Paris, France, tower, skyscrapers do not really all that much interest me at the best of times and if truth be told, I also often do tend to find most of them aesthetically unpleasant (and at times even an affront to nature itself).

But that all having been said, I do still find Who Built That?: Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects engaging enough to a certain point and level, and especially Didier Cornile's blueprint like and always crystal clear accompanying architectural illustrations are both successfully rendered and very much educational and enlightening. However, considering my own and personal lack of interest regarding and actual occasional aversion to the entire concept of skyscrapers, it would have taken both a truly superb and spectacular authorial narrative (with not only general architectural details but also much personal and biographical information on the presented architects and not just focused on their creations, their skyscrapers, their buildings), as well as a list of sources and supplemental suggestions for further reading (in other words a decent bibliography) for me to have rated this book, for me to have considered Who Built That? Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects with three stars or more (and as that has most definitely and in my opinion unfortunately not at all been the case here, my ranking for Who Built That? Skyscrapers: An Introduction to Skyscrapers and Their Architects will be a high two stars at best, as I am for one, as already pointed out, not really personally interested enough in and enamoured enough of skyscrapers and for two, the rather woeful lack of biographical, of life story information on the eight featured architects combined with there being no bibliographical information included whatsoever, well that really does always majorly bother me and grate with regard to completely non fiction offerings).

Just wanted to make sure to add to the master list Building Our House, as it both fits and in my opinion needs to be included.

Manybooks wrote: "Just wanted to make sure to add to the master list Building Our House, as it both fits and in my opinion needs to be included."

I second! This is a wonderful story.

For a lighter take on the theme, see if your library has A House in the Woods by Inga Moore. My review:

Oh the art, yes. And don't miss the endpapers!
I love the dedication to th neew Beavers of Scotland. I too hope they're doing well in their reintroduction, as noted in this 2011 book.

The story, well, I dunno. I guess I can like it the most if I think of it as a fable, gently amusing, heartwarming... and that's all. But other no doubt love it!

Cheryl wrote: "For a lighter take on the theme, see if your library has A House in the Woods by Inga Moore. My review:

Oh the art, yes. And don't miss the endpapers!
I love the de..."

Thanks for posting that. I had read it years ago and forgot all about it when it came time for introducing building books to my boys. I thought it was charming!

I'm curious if you think (know?) whether they'll like it. I mean, it's fantasy fiction, about a topic that is as solid as concrete, so they might object to the dichotomy....

My oldest son loves solid as concrete ;-) he is very literal and not really into fantasy. My youngest might be a better audience for this one, actually, but I’ll share it with both and see.

:smiles:

I wonder if anyone has seen this one - The Bridge

I just finished another by Emily Cheney Neville and am curious about it. She was 70 at the time it was published, two decades after her notable YA books. Kirkus Review makes it sound good.

Michael wrote: "I wonder if anyone has seen this one - The Bridge

I just finished another by Emily Cheney Neville and am curious about it. She was 70 at the time it was published, two decades after..."

I don't recognize it, and our library system does not have a copy.

Michael wrote: "I wonder if anyone has seen this one - The Bridge

I just finished another by Emily Cheney Neville and am curious about it. She was 70 at the time it was published, two decades after..."

It does look good!

I just gave Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building five stars. My review:

The spreads with the drawing of children 'playing at' building on the left, and a photograph of a recognized building on the other, is very effective. Children's imaginations will surely be stimulated as they see what can develop from small starts.

The concrete poetic text is a wonderful bonus - a simple narrative would have been fine, to see the words chosen so carefully, and then placed on the page so cleverly, just wows me. And there's more - each building (and its architect) is explored further in the end notes. Sources are also listed (but unfortunately there's no actual further reading list).

I especially appreciate that attention is given to more 'green' buildings, including a Fuller dome and a work by Simon Velez, who is quoted w/: "Bamboo is the green steel of nature."

The only thing some people might miss is that this is all buildings, no bridges etc. But I don't think it's a loss; rather, it's about having a tight focus. Anyway, fantastic book for any library or educator of any age 3-13 and up. I will definitely look for more by the author.

Thank you for posing that, Cheryl. We read it some time ago and I had forgotten to post. It is s great book.