Walking Wires

With all that's been going on around here, I haven't had much time for heavy reading, and thus I'm forced to retreat to the genre I prefer anyway: children's books. Namely, Caldecott Award Winners.

We stopped through Shakespeare and Company bookstore today for the first time. It's a famous, historic, English-speaking bookstore in the very center of Paris across the street from Notre Dame. I had heard about it, but was even more pleasantly surprised than I expected to be. Full of good books, of course, but also full of delightful little surprises everywhere you look, whether it's a quote on the wall, a unique mosaic floor, a typewriter at your disposal in a little hidden nook, or notes stuck to the walls left from other book-loving tourists. All this to say, you should really consider visiting next time you swing through Paris.
We didn't have a whole lot of time to linger, but I walked upstairs and immediately saw this book sitting in the children's section. I'm not much of an impulse buyer, but there was no questioning. The only thing that would have made me hesitate is the fact that it's not a hardcover.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is the story of Philippe Petit, the man who stretched a tight rope between the Twin Towers and danced and walked for close to an hour. If you've been around here for a while, you might remember this was the subject of my favorite film in 2008, Man on Wire.

I just finished reading it with the kid a bit ago. I was a bit taken aback that the perspective of these drawings evoked some of the same wonder--as well as that feeling in my gut I get from heights--that the film did. Maybe it helps that I already saw the film. Maybe it helps that I just saw again the towers of Notre Dame where Petit walked first. But when pages fold out to increase the height of the towers, you are gazing upward in awe along with the other New Yorkers down on the street. The colors and textures help, but the perspective! It's a pretty remarkable achievement, well deserving of the Caldecott medal. And like the film, I love how tastefully it becomes a tribute to the towers that are no longer there, without explicitly saying so. All that to say, the film and the book are the best companions I've seen since The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I suppose if I continue to read it to the kid, there is going to have be plenty of clarifying commentary, like safety first and how to respect police officers...but for now I'm content to stare upward in amazement.

What? You still have not seen Man on Wire OR The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? I'm not so sure we can be friends.