Brooklyn Bridge

Lynn Curlee's award-winning "Brooklyn Bridge" offers a captivating historical account of one of America's most enduring landmarks. Through vivid illustrations and engaging text, it details the fourteen-year construction process, highlighting the immense challenges, engineering marvels, and human stories involved, including the tragic loss of its original designer and instances of fraud. This book is perfect for children aged 4-11, serving as an excellent introduction to American history, engineering, and the power of perseverance. It provides a rich context for discussing themes of innovation, teamwork, and overcoming adversity.

Award-winning author-illustrator Lynn Curlee’s “wonderful picture book” (School Library Journal) offers a compelling visual history of the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” the Brooklyn Bridge—now with a new look! “It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, but a bridge.” So wrote one architectural critic of the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the grandest and most eloquent monuments to the American spirit ever produced. Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge’s triumphant arches lie astonishing tales of loss, deception, genius, and daring. Over the fourteen-year course of its construction, there was an underwater fire, fraud, and many deaths, including that of designer and chief engineer, John A. Roebling. When the bridge was finished, as part of the opening day festivities, the president, and two mayors crossed it. Its magnificent site, breathtaking span, cutting-edge technology, and sheer beauty have made it the subject of poems, paintings, photographs, novels, plays, and movies.