Building - Hardcover

Cooper, Elisha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688164943 ISBN 13: 9780688164942

Publisher: Greenwillow Books, 1999

Synopsis

It begins with an empty city lot and ends with a gleaming new building. But what happens in between? With his trademark sketch pad, watercolors, and sharp eye for atmosphere and detail, Elisha Cooper takes note of what goes on at a construction site -- from the obvious to the not-so-obvious. And curious young builders will relish his funny observations and unfailing scrutiny. There are backhoes that look like messy eaters, and lots of hammering that sounds like do-re-mi. Come see (and hear) the building -- it's going up now!

About this title

About the Authors

Elisha Cooper is the award-winning author of Farm, Beach, Magic Thinks Big, and Dance!, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book, as well as other acclaimed titles. His books for adults include the memoir Crawling: A Father's First Year.

Elisha Cooper lives with his family in New York City. He has loved some great dogs in his life.

Elisha Cooper is the award-winning author of Farm, Beach, Magic Thinks Big, and Dance!, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book, as well as other acclaimed titles. His books for adults include the memoir Crawling: A Father's First Year.

Elisha Cooper lives with his family in New York City. He has loved some great dogs in his life.

Reviews

Kindergarten-Grade 2-Architects, carpenters, masons, backhoes, cranes, lunch trucks, scaffolds, plastic sheets, and Porta Pottis are all part of the fascinating process of turning a vacant lot into a multistoried office building. Cooper fills these white pages with loosely sketched, watercolor-and-pencil renderings of construction-related people and things as he chronicles the events on a building site. The text design often reflects the activity taking place on the page and sometimes requires readers to rotate the book. The illustrations effectively capture the bustle and camaraderie of the multiethnic and gender-balanced crew, but are occasionally too blurry to be easily interpreted. The hand-printed labels accompanying some drawings are also frequently illegible. However, the text not only delivers a realistic description of the sights, sounds, and even smells of a construction site, but can also be whimsically fanciful, as when the backhoe "gnaws into the earth and scoops up dirt like a messy eater trying to bring food to its mouth." The challenging vocabulary requires a more sophisticated audience than Sue Tarsky's The Busy Building Book (Putnam, 1998), but this book hits the nail on the head for slightly older sidewalk superintendents.
Carol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From deserted urban lot to finished structure, this brief, amply illustrated volume documents the process of constructing a three-story building. As in his earlier children's books (Country Fair and Ballpark), Cooper's latest sketchbook strikes his signature pleasing balance between the factual and the whimsical. Watercolor and pencil illustrations combine small-scale, intentionally rudimentary images of busy workers with views of the building's structural progress. Often presented as extended captions, the narrative is as sprightly and informal as the artwork: a backhoe "gnaws into the earth and scoops up dirt like a messy eater trying to bring food to its mouth." Abundant anecdotes bring a refreshing, true-to-life quality to this chronicle (the hands of a worker smoothing wet concrete "are crusted in gunk and he has to use his wrist to push his glasses up his nose"; a contractor lugging toilets upstairs "bumps into walls and can't see her feet"). The text runs up and down the pagesAand occasionally even upside down. In one particularly playful arrangement of type, the words appear to spill from the spout of a cement mixer. Smoothly planting technical terms and techniques alongside a layperson's detailed observations, Cooper constructs a cheerful tribute to a significant accomplishment. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cooper (Ballpark, 1998, etc.) once again takes a familiar sight and infuses it with a squiggly magic as he ebulliently illustrates how a vacant lot is transformed by construction. The architect comes with her blueprints to a lot full of trash and weeds. A backhoe follows, and big trucks delivering materials and digging out stuff. Then the workers come, with mortar that looks like ``a big tub of oatmeal'' and concrete that ``smells like chalk.'' They fetch and carry and measure things off, and they eat fried chicken and call home. Cooper piles on numerous small images of workers hammering and hauling toilets and wedging insulation, often opposite a full-page image of the building as it slowly takes form and shape, filling the vacant lot. The lines of text come at right angles and bend around machinery as Cooper tells about a worker ``with hands and arms so big they could juggle trucks'' and another ``with two braids'' who repeats a joke to her co-worker, who repeats it to the worker above him. The pictures are fascinating and informative; readers will come away with a real understanding of how a building comes into existence. (Picture book. 4-9) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The step-by-step process that transforms a deserted lot into an attractive building is revealed in this small (eight inches by eight inches) picture book. Cooper does some interesting things with text position to visually convey concepts, but the overall design doesn't particularly lend itself to a young audience. For example, the text is very small, as are the illustrations, which are done in a loose, painterly style that lacks definition and detail. The limited palette of muted earth tones would work fine with older kids, but little ones, particularly prereaders, will need something to grab their attention--all of which means that this is not a good candidate for group sharing. However, the book is well written and describes the process in simple enough terms for young children to grasp. Used in an intimate, one-on-one or small-group setting, this could be very effective. Lauren Peterson

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688164943
• ISBN 13: 9780688164942
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Cooper Elisha
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40