Linnea Hendrickson, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been an elementary school librarian for five years, and has taught children’s literature at the University of New Mexico since 1987. She holds a degree in history from the University of Michigan and masters degrees in teaching, English, and library science from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Arizona. Linnea co-authored, with Beverly Renford, Bibliographic Instruction: A Handbook.

Linnea served on the 1998 Caldecott Committee (Paul Zelinsky’s Rapunzel was the winner that year) and was on the 2003 Caldecott Committee which chose Mordicai Gerstein’s The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, published by Millbrook Press.

Linnea recently wrote a critical piece about Gerstein’s award-winning book, which she has granted Ohio SCBWI permission to re-print with the disclaimer that “these are my views only, and do not represent those of the [Caldecott] committee.”

Linnea can be reached at www.unm.edu/~lhendr.

This was one of those rare and special books that captured my heart when I first read it from beginning to end. From the cover, with Philippe Petit’s foot on that thin cable in the sky, to the final page with the twin towers looking “as if imprinted on the sky,” every page is masterful, and the text is spare, precise, and poetic. The title page shows the towers in winter, still under construction, snow falling in a drab landscape, dark clouds looming above them. Then we see them in perfection on a lovely summer’s day, an easily missed Philippe doffing his top hat to them from the lower left corner.

The layout varies effectively between full pages and small panels. On one page, for example, pairs of horizontal pictures balance the images of the twin towers. When Philippe thinks back to his adventures in Paris, the jagged edges of the panels indicate that he is thinking ofthe past. When he dreams of walking between the towers, the towers rise in a glowing sunset behind him. When Philippe and his friends go out onto the roof in the night, the borders surrounding the panels change from white to blue-gray. The archer shooting an arrow into the night sky presents a mythic image. The perspectives are dizzying.

The cable in Philippe’s hands is actual size – 5/8 inch thick. As Philippe steps out into the air, the sun rises over Brooklyn and Coney Island, and the borders gradually change to white again. If ever a fold-out page was used to advantage, it is in this book, first folding out horizontally to emphasize the vastness of the space between the towers, and secondly emphasizing the great height of the towers. As Philippe steps out onto the wire, where, “He felt alone and happy and absolutely free,” the borders vanish altogether and the very borders of the book expand. I love the abrupt switch in perspective from Philippe looking down, to the people on the ground looking up. The expression on Philippe’s face is ecstatic as he kneels upon the wire, but clouds are beginning to encircle him. The policeman’s hat dropping over the edge, underscores the reality of falling, and the danger.

It is hard to look at the picture of Philippe lying on the wire without becoming overcome with vertigo. The reader sees the strong cross-pattern of the pole and the thin wire below him, the matching shape of the seagull looming above, larger than Philippe’s body. Philippe appears to be suspended in air between the larger-than-life bird and the frantic policemen. Rain is beginning to fall, but interestingly, although articles about the walk mention that it did begin to rain, Gerstein chooses not to mention this in the text, although he shows the rain. Gerstein has him returning, “When he felt completely satisfied.”

Philippe glances backward with apparent longing toward the free-flying seagull as he holds out his hands for the handcuffs. Even in handcuffs Philippe’s high spirits remain. He juggles the hat of one of the officers as he is led away. How to end such a story?

Sentenced to perform for the children of the city, Philippe all in white in the dark of night suggests a heroic figure. The dark skyscrapers in the background echo the medieval shape of the castle in the park from which his wire is strung. The fac t that two boys jerk the wire, causing Philippe to fall, emphasizes that he is human, not a superhero with magical powers, and that the danger on the wire between the towers was very real. A father holds a delighted child up to the tight rope walker – the way parents hold children up to passing royalty or returning heroes.

The text on the next-to-last page simply states that now the towers are gone, while the picture shows the skyline without them. Then, the final image shows the towers as many remember them, with Philippe on the wire between them, a testimony to the power of memory and the resiliency of the human spirit.

I have read this book to numerous children from ages 7 to 11, and it has held every class spellbound. There’s ambiguity in the story that makes it interesting. Was Philippe Petit a hero or a fool? Or possibly both? The image of this man defying reason and defying death, strikes me as a symbol of hope, even of immortality.

What he did was unthinkable, just as the destruction of the towers was unthinkable, yet what he did was an act of bravery and defiance – just as the destruction of the towers and the tremendous loss of life also called forth bravery and the acceptance of a reality that seemed to be impossible. The image of this young man walking in the air between the towers is an antidote to those other horrifying images of bodies falling through space as the towers burned and crashed.

© Linnea Hendrickson, 2004. All rights reserved.

« Back to Articles