Children's books have the ability to teach to readers both young and old. Philippe Petit was a name I had never heard until reading this book, but now that I have, I am curious to learn more. This is the story of a Parisian tightrope walker and his daring feat of walking, dancing, jumping, and lying on a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center buildings on August 7, 1974, shortly before the towers were completed.
It strikes me that people just fifteen years older than I am might clearly remember this famous performance and consider its existence to be a part of American cultural literacy, while people my age most likely have never heard anything about it from simply not having lived through that moment. Likewise, elementary students today will grow up in a world where those famous buildings are some vague concept of American history and tragedy, like the Challenger explosion or the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Without this book, young people today might never hear the phrase World Trade Center unless it were followed by the word attacks. Gerstein has created a story that will remind children that these buildings didn't just fall, but that they existed years and years before that terrible day, and they were a part of some wonderful events as well.
Gerstein uses varied sizes of illustrations throughout the work to make each page seem like a new and exciting experience. There are also several fold out pages. At times, the book must be held sideways to fully appreciate the pictures. This helps convey the overwhelming height of the buildings.
Gerstein, M (2003). The man who walked between the towers. Brookfield, Connecticut: Roaring Brook Press.
Gerstein, M (2003). The man who walked between the towers. Retrieved February 1, 2009, from Amazon Web site:
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