Those Building Men

The author of Heaven recalls the unheralded men--mostly new immigrants--whose labors served to build the canals, roads, railroads, bridges, and towering buildings of the United States.

Gr 2-5-This poetic tribute praises and remembers the men, "the fathers," who built the bridges, railroads, roads, and buildings in America. They came from far away, looked ahead to linking the waters, moving the earth, channeling the swamps, and creating walls of steel, and when they were done, they'd say "Ain't that something." Moser's large, dramatic, sun-bleached watercolors depict young men in undershirts, far-looking old men in beaten-up hats, Native American skywalkers, African-American drillers and muleskinners, all seen working against the pale blue washed sky. Readers may be intrigued by the book's suggestion that perhaps a relative of theirs could have been a builder long ago and ask about their own family history. The endnote states that oral tradition remembers many cultures at work building and that women who are not mentioned in the text nonetheless labored along with men. It is elegantly and symbolically illustrated with an old man in dress shoes and a suit resting peacefully in a hammock.-Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA

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Ages 6-9, younger for reading aloud. Johnson's poem muses on the men who moved the earth for canals, laid steel for rail tracks, cut down trees for building. Moser's muscular images are big and bold: Irish and African American, Italian and Navajo, young and grizzled men inhabit these scenes. A plank road, a railway survey, a cabled bridge show the fruits of these men's labors, and a note at the end pays tribute to the builders. Youngsters may need some encouragement to get in tune with the somber images and the quiet words, but they will see the sweat and grit it took to build the world as we now see it: crisscrossed with roads and ways, glittering with tall buildings and the sweep of bridges. GraceAnne DeCandido
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