INTO THE SKY

Hunter (Cross A Bridge, p. 268) offers an accessible, often soaring first look at skyscrapers. Beginning with the ten- story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, the book traces the evolution of tall buildings, concluding with a model for the would-be Sky City 1000 in Japan. Clear, single-sentence explanations for terms such as beams, columns, foundation, pilings meet the needs of the youngest construction-watchers, while the roles of the people behind the structures, engineers and ironworkers, are touched on. Specific buildings are displayed against a world map on the endpapers and in a graph-like spread that visually compares the heights of five towers. With a clean, graphic style similar to Donald Crews’s work, Miller’s compositions use geometric shapes to fine advantage. Bold black steel and scaffolding cut the flat planes of sky-blue backgrounds, while skewed angles and details such as a light-dotted nighttime skyline add interest. (Picture book/nonfiction. 2-5)