Sky Boys—How They Built the Empire State Building

This Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book and ALA-ALSC Notable Children's Book provides a riveting brick-by-brick account of how one of the most amazing accomplishments in American architecture came to be. It’s 1930 and times are tough for Pop and his son. But look! On the corner of 34th Street and 5th Avenue, a building straight and simple as a pencil is being built in record time. Hundreds of men are leveling, shoveling, hauling. They’re hoisting 60,000 tons of steal, stacking 10 million bricks, eating lunch in the clouds. And when they cut ribbon and the crowds rush in, the boy and his father will be among the first to zoom up to the top of the tallest building in the world and see all of Manhattan spread at their feet.

Deborah Hopkinson is the author of A Boy Called Dickens and the ALA-ALSC Notable Children's Book Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek. Her other titles include Apples to Oregon, Under the Quilt of Night (also illustrated by James E. Ransome), and Fannie in the Kitchen. She lives in Oregon.

James E. Ransome is the illustrator of many highly acclaimed titles for children, including The Creation by James Weldon Johnson, which won a Coretta Scott King Award for illustration, and Let My People Go by Patricia McKissack, winner of an NAACP Image Award. His other titles include Major Taylor, Young Pele and Before There Was Mozart, all three written by Lesa Cline-Ransome. He lives in New York.