by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 28, 2010

It's the Golden Gate Bridge, stretching from San Francisco to Marin - but it hasn't been built yet. "My pop is building the Golden Gate Bridge," says the little boy narrating, though his mother reminds him it's got a crew of more than 1,000 workers. "People said this bridge couldn't be built... They say the bay is too deep, the currents too strong, the winds blowing in from the ocean too fierce."

"But I know my pop can do it."

It's a nice way to personalize the San Francisco landmark, and it's nice that Eve Bunting has chosen its construction for her story book. Bunting immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1959, according to the book's jacket, and "Now whenever she sees the bridge she remembers that first glimpse of her new country and her new life." But she also shares the brave real-life feats that went into the bridge's construction. It's a reminder that world around us required teamwork to build!

There's an amazing illustration showing one tower on the bridge - with the tiny painters on a scaffolding, changing its grey metal to orange. Illustrator C. F. Payne has drawn artwork for Rolling Stone, Time, Sports Illustrated and Readers Digest, so he knows how to capture a momentous event.  He's even created five stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, according to the book's jacket. But Bunting also redirects the story to the little boy, watching for his father through binoculars.

"[W]hen the wind blows through the Golden Gate, the men cling to the girders like caterpillars on a branch," Bunting writes. And she's foreshadowing the book's dramatic climax. One day the scaffolding blows loose from the bridge, and the workers topple into the safety net, and then down into the San Francisco Bay. The narrator searches for his father with the binoculars - and eventually spots him. But then he realizes his friend's father was on the scaffolding too, and he desperately scans the bridge again, until he also spots him on one of the cross girders.

"The next day we find out that only two of the twelve men in the water were saved."

The boy realizes then how dangerous the bridgework was - not just for his father, but for the painters as well. "Pop says there's less talking and joking now among the men. There's a remembering." But when the bridge nears its completion, the father still stares at it proudly with his family. "It's like a giant harp.

"A harp for the angels to play."

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