Hard Hat Area - Hardcover

Roth, Susan L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582349460 ISBN 13: 9781582349466

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2004

Synopsis

A unique day-in-the-life look at a real girl named Kristen who works as an ironworkers apprentice on some of New York City's tallest buildings. Following Kristen around the construction site, readers will learn what tools the workers use, how they use them, and how they work as a team. With a fascinating variety of materials, labels, and photographs from an actual site where Kristen worked, Susan L. Roth has created a masterpiece of creative collage-and an eye-popping learning experience for readers of all ages.

About this title

About the Author

Susan L. Roth is the author and illustrator of many wonderful books, including Happy Birthday Mr. Kang, It's a Dog's New York, and the best selling My Love for You. Her books have received such awards as the New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, the ABA Pick of the Lists, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. She has three grown children and lives in New York City with her husband.

Reviews

Grade 1-4–Kristen, an apprentice at a big building site, is responsible for checking with the ironworkers and bringing them snacks and tools. One by one, the specialized workers make their requests. For example, the connectors need another pail of connecting bolts and the hooker-on needs a choker cable. On each spread, numbered footnotes in small print describe objects mentioned in the text or shown in the illustrations. Although the plot is thin and the writing is somewhat dry, Roth presents a plethora of construction jargon. The last spread asks readers to identify the titles of the 12 ironworkers mentioned in the narrative; the answers are appended. The paper-collage illustrations are bold and busy with signs, city backgrounds, and iron beams. They clearly show the organized chaos of a building site. This unique look at construction trades may be useful for units on careers or community helpers.–Linda Staskus, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 1-3. Kristen takes orders in the sky, but she is not a flight attendant. She is an apprentice ironworker, a gopher of sorts for the ironworkers on the construction site of a tall New York City building. Her typical day begins with taking workers' orders for everything from doughnuts to choker cables--and that involves climbing multiple stories and balancing on beams at dizzying, dangerous heights. Each spread shows Kristen in a different part of the unfinished building, talking with a different type of ironworker. Yellow numbered dots identify everything from lump hammers to the site fence, and a key supplies a short definition of each. (Readers eventually find out how the food orders get to the workers but not the equipment.) The photomontage background papers were created from photographs taken from great heights in New York; unfortunately, the text all but disappears into these busy collages. An author's note emphasizes the importance of teamwork and identifies the actual Kristen about whom the book is written. A shoo-in for hard-core junior builders. Karin Snelson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582349460
• ISBN 13: 9781582349466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40