Customer Reviews

Gargoyles, Girders & Glass Houses

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From Florence to Turkey, every civilization holds great building projects and creators, and Bo Zaunders and illustrator Roxie Munro offer a tour of the best of master builders around the world in Gargoyles, Girders & Glass Houses. Kids in grades 3-5 will find each featured building holds a story of its creator, and will find the accounts of building challenges involving.

Readers will be absorbed by the works of seven brilliant and ambitious master builders in this attractive introduction to architecture. Share the highs and lows of notable architects and engineering constructions as you travel through five centuries and six countries. This is a remarkable tribute to the genius and passion behind the Eiffel Tower, the mosques of Turkey's Mimar Koca Sinan, and the varied works of Brazil's O Aleijadinho. Also included are the stories behind Brunelleschi's dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Roeblings' Brooklyn Bridge, the buildings of Barcelona's Gaudi, and Van Alen's Chrysler Building in New York City. With lively prose, Zaunders opens each of the eight chapters with a significant scene from the individual's career, followed by historical and architectural background.

Munro's ink drawings with color washes capture a vivid sense of each structure's unique light, space and feeling. Her exceptional perspective adds drama to many of the compositions, and well-chosen details keep even large projects within the range of our understanding. The edges of the pages contain large paintings and smaller images, which convey both the grandeur and the subtle details described in the text. In example, the skyward view of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore illustrates its sheer size, but also portrays the hoist's intricate workings, along with the oxen supplying the power.

For grades 3-7, this is an engaging first look at the glories of structural design.