Sometimes I happen across the perfect children's book at the perfect time...and sometimes I happen across them a few days late.
Monday is the day books on hold come in to our little library, and today a I picked up another stack of books. Among them was "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers" by Mordicai Gerstein. (We were recently introduced to Mordicai Gerstein when we read A Book...and so far I'm very impressed.)
It's the amazing and true story of Philippe Petit who walked and performed a number of stunts on a tightrope stretched between the Twin Towers in 1974.
On one of the final pages, it states that the Twin Towers are no longer there but live on in memory. We read it to Firecracker at bedtime. She often asks if things in books and movies are "real," so she had the same question about the story, the towers and why they're no longer there. It was then that I realized we really hadn't talked to her much about 9/11. We get most of our news coverage from reading internet articles and don't watch hardly any TV, so she didn't see it mentioned in the news. It was a good way to open up a discussion about some of what happened without giving her so many details that she would have a hard time going to bed.
Besides being an amazing and well written story, the illustrations are beautiful and make the story come alive.
I don't have a craft or anything to go along with it, but thought I'd let you all know about the book in case your young children are asking you questions about it. It's also a nice reminder that there was history to the Twin Towers before 9/11.
Here's a YouTube video I found that has some actual pictures of Phillipe Petit performing.
That's amazing that someone would walk that! Sounds like a great book!
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