The Man Who Walked Between The Towers

The Man Who Walked Between The Towers is written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. It is the winner of the Caldecott Medal for it’s outstanding illustrations. The target audience of this picture book is aimed at first through fourth grade students.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars ****

Summary: This is the true story of Philippe Petit who walked a tight rope between the World Trade Centers in New York City, August 7, 1974. The author speaks about the great feat of the trick and how the memory of the stunt will live on forever just as memories of the World Trade Centers will as well.

One great thing about this book is that it is a true story and not very often do we find teachers using nonfictional, true events within the reading curriculum of the class. Explaining to students that this is a true story can be a great way to draw them into the reading and give them a different type of experience through a picture book. The pictures themselves can tell the story alone but the text is also written beautifully. It is not too wordy for young children but not too simple for an older audience, not to mention the text compliments the illustrations well. I think that children would be intrigued by this story from the standpoint of that this an almost unimaginable trick that fascinates the mind.

Read about the real Philippe Petit here: http://longliveirony.com/Petit.html

Watch a pictorial of photographs from the historical day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ddpV1GvF7E

 I feel this book can be used in two different ways within a classroom. First, teachers can design great lessons surrounding the physics that went into this extreme act. It takes a lot of understanding of the laws of physics to pull off what Petit did. Discussions can be formulated around ideas such as balance, gravity, and mass. The second way this book can be incorporated into a classroom is to talk about the history of the World Trade Centers and the events that book place before September 11, 2001. This can be linked to history as students can be exposed to the history that led up to their destruction on that fatal Tuesday morning. Young children in school now are either too young to remember 9/11 or were not even alive to experience what that day was like. It is an important part of our countries recent history and will never be forgotten. Students should be exposed to the WTC and their meaning should be explained within our history. The book does not reference the terrorist acts, the author only briefly acknowledged the towers are now gone. Students may be wondering what happened to them and leaving hanging questions that should be answered since it is a significant event.

Philippe Petit