Skyscraper. By Lynn Curlee. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, 40 pp.,
$17.99. Ages 8-12. By Janice Harayda Lately I’ve been looking
into some of the potential candidates for the Newbery and
Caldecott medals that the American Library Association
www.ala.org will hand out in January. As usual, it’s been both
inspiring and disheartening. Some publishers are clearly putting
enormous care into turning out wonderful children’s books. At
the same time, they are continuing to pander nakedly to the all-
important school and library markets, sometimes undermining the
accuracy or credibility of an otherwise worthy book. A recent
casualty is Lynn Curlee’s Skyscraper, a beautifully produced
social history of the world’s tallest buildings, which has an
elegant Art Deco design and color palette. This book might seem
to have little in common with Brian Selznick’s novel in words
and pictures, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. But like Selznick,
Curlee has created a book for 8-to-12-year-olds that plays
successfully with form. Skyscraper