Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building

In Depression-era New York City, dreams collide with reality. Our unnamed young narrator's father has just lost his job, and so the boy must wander the harsh, cold streets of Manhattan, looking for firewood. However, one day near 34th and 5th streets, he sees a dream unfold, as 3,000 men construct a symbol of triumph and tenacity: the 102-story Empire Stae Building. The book is magnificent: Powerful images, poetic language, and construction scenes and details merge into a dramatic tale that's both historic and personal. The boy (and sometimes his father) joins other New Yorkers who look in awe at the evolving building. Ms. Hopkinson uses facts and simple, strong words in her descriptions: We see men sinking "210 massive steel columns" 55-feet into the ground, building "a steel forest" that "can bear the full weight of this giant-to-be: 365,000 tons." Flatbeds carry steel beams "from the fiery furnaces of Pittsburgh" through the streets, looking "river surging through the concrete canyons of Manhattan." While strong and almost terse, the writing is somehow concommitantly lyrical. The story teems with action ("hoisting, swinging, spinning") and facts that will fascinate any young reader (and most adults as well). Two-page action sequences set within the story slow down time so that one can appreciate the danger, the men's skill, and the scope of the project. We see four men (there are no female workers--accurate as far as I know), working as a team to rivet steel girders together: The "Heater Man" tosses hot metal to "the Catcher," who fits it into the girder hole steadied by the "Bucker-up," finally hammered into place by "the Gunman." For adults, it's is a testosterone kick; kids will enjoy the heroism and the sheer grandeur of the construction leading to the finished tower. Although the city is not as dirty-looking, nor the people as poor as one might expect, there's still a Depression-based realism that doesn't sanitize the workers' hard lives. In one of her best lines, Ms. Hopkinson writes that while each man works as fast as possible, he does so knowing that hundreds down below him would "take his place over his spot in a flash. Yet knowing that the quicker he finishes, the sooner he'll be back in line himself, waiting and desparate for work." There's a subtle but unmistakeable contrast between the gleaming building--and the hard-working but generally vigorous men working on the gleaming building, and those hundreds below them. Another wonderful two-page spread shows the building reaching skyward between June and November. culminating in an illustration of 15 men astride the building's top in March 1931, proud and even gleeful, but also tired. James E. Ransome's pictures are uniformly spectacular, and it culminates in his noil painting of the Empire State Building at dawn, majestically overlooking the island and beyond, towering over everything else. WE also see the golden placque of the building inside the lobby, the apprehension o

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Empire State Building's construction is Sky Boys: How They Built The Empire State Building. While vintage black and white photos from the era greet the eye on the inside and back cover pages, the book is loaded with color illustrations which bring to life the builder's experience. The journey to Depression-era Manhattan and a boy who watches its construction brings the promise, hope and allure of the Empire State Building to life.