Working high above the ground, sky boys “crawl like spiders on steel, spinning their giant web in the sky.” Part of the construction team that built the Empire State Building in 1931, sky boys worked with riveters, bricklayers, masons, electricians, plumbers, water boys, and others to create the world’s tallest building of that time. Told from the perspective of a boy watching the construction in progress, details of the laborers’ work is paired with oil paint illustrations of varying perspectives that offer a dizzying sense of the structure’s immense height. Photographs by Lewis Hines on the endpapers provide additional images of the building and those who made it in a story that also presents the rising structure as a symbol of hope in the midst of the Depression. (Ages 5–9)

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.