Pop's Bridge
Grade 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'sSky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building(Random, 2006) features more skywalkers at their dangerous jobs.–Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CTCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.