School Library Journal Review
Gr 3 Up-"Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in, even if it's just a color." This extensive homage to one of the most famous landmarks in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge, is quirky yet pleasing. Unassuming text conveys a bit of history about the Bay area and its ultimate quest to create a passageway from the bay to the Pacific Ocean. Paper-cut images playfully depict the faces of people who were involved with the project and those who voiced opinions about how it should ultimately look. The visual simplicity adds charm and makes this story welcoming to a wide array of readers. The length makes it perfect for sharing with those with shorter attention spans, yet it is informative and engaging for independent readers. Obviously a labor of love, it will inspire readers to find the beauty in man-made architectural wonders around the world. The book jacket unfolds into a giant poster of the Golden Gate Bridge. VERDICT A pleasing picture book that spans a variety of needs, aesthetics, and audiences.-Carol Connor, Cincinnati Public Schools, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Simple questions make fine picture books. Why is the Golden Gate Bridge orange? National Book Award finalist Eggers (A Hologram for the King) begins before the bridge was built, as some Bay Area residents protest the idea: "It will mar the beauty of the land, they said. What's wrong with boats? they said." But the project goes ahead, and public opinion swings around to support it. Eggers's featherlight humor provides laughs throughout, as in the description of the bridge's steel parts journeying through the Panama Canal: "It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind, for they are inanimate objects." Although the Navy wants to stripe the bridge black and yellow, and most people expect it to be gray, Irving Morrow, the project's idiosyncratic champion, defends the vivid orange of the steel's anti-rust paint, making the proclamation that gives the book its title. Nichols's (Crabtree) construction-paper cutouts and hand-lettering provide a series of puckish visual counterpoints for the story's two important messages: that situations and objects that appear unchangeable do, in fact, come from somewhere, and that adults can squabble even more foolishly than children. Ages 3-up. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Gray bridges abound, but there's only one major one that's orangeand here's how that happened. Striving for whimsy when he's not being patronizing"It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind, for they are inanimate objects"Eggers tracks the building of the Golden Gate Bridge from rejected design proposals ("It was functional, but it was grotesque") on. Along with giving the bridge's innovative features a light once-over, he introduces the project's three main architects. One had designed the Manhattan Bridge, "believed to be in or near New York City," as Eggers coyly puts it; another led the populist campaign to keep the finished structure the International Orange with which its prefabricated steel parts were (and still are) coated because it "somehow looked right." Whether young readers will find these observations, or such lines as, "Sometimes the things humans make baffle even the humans who make them," illuminating is anybody's guess. In broad collages assembled from large pieces of cut paper, Nichols illustrates the enterprise with stylized portrait heads and abstract views of golden hills set against blue (or sometimes gray) expanses of sea and sky. The finished bridge poses grandly in several. That it's the "best-known and best-loved bridge in the world" is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs a self-conscious, 104-page picture book to draw attention to it. (jacket poster) (Informational picture book. 7-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Everyone knows the Golden Gate Bridge is an eye-arresting orange. But not everyone knows it was originally intended to be a drab but serviceable and noncontroversial gray. This is the jumping-off point for Eggers' lighthearted introduction to the design and construction of the bridge itself. Along the way, readers are introduced to the site and the three men who were responsible for the bridge's conception and execution, most notably architect Irving Morrow, who boldly asserted the bridge should be orange, the natural color of its steel structure. (Obviously not everyone agreed.) Eggers' text is sprightly and tongue-in-cheek. Speaking of the workers, he writes, If you drop a hammer or wrench from a bridge hundreds of feet above the ocean, you're pretty much out of luck. Eggers is such an enthusiast that readers will forgive his occasional hyperbole: The Golden Gate Bridge . . . is the best-known and best-loved bridge in the world. Hmm, what about London Bridge? Nichols brings a similar sensibility to his whimsical paper cutout pictures, while his dust jacket is something of a tour de force, unfolding to offer a poster-size picture of the beloved bridge, a span that continues to dazzle. Happily, Eggers and Nichols' colorful work dazzles, too.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2015 Booklist
