CONSTRUCTION ZONE

With obvious reverence for his project, Sobol’s photographs chaperone the young reader through a three-year construction project. The color images are varied in perspective, but each captures the action. “The construction zone,” Hudson points out, “is like a giant puzzle,” and together author and photographer, piece by piece, unveil the whole. Each page contains the definition of one or more emboldened words from the text providing for succinct, but copious information. The journey spans architectural plans, excavation, rebar and concrete to insulation and fixtures. Hudson lingers on every person involved, with obvious respect for those who hang from scaffolds or painstakingly lay wire. The finished product, in all its gleaming glory, is an elegantly curved and oddly angled Frank Gehry creation. Advanced for a toddler, but this read will be fascinating for the burgeoning builder. Only the penultimate photograph—of the finished structure—lacks the compositional beauty of the rest, but in every other respect this intriguing project gives an amazingly broad overview of the entire building process. (Nonfiction. 4-7)