Builders and Buildings

A machine digs a big hole. A cement mixer pours cement. Carpenters put up walls. Bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, and painters do their part. Through brilliantly simple words and pictures we follow each step, and before our eyes a house is built. [Amazon]

Handsomely illustrated, shapes both simple (square, rectangle) and complex (cone, hexagon) are introduced as found in a range of art and architecture, faith, and practices in Muslim countries. A concluding note by the author broadly explains Islam and the range of countries from which her inspiration was drawn.

Travel through time, imagination, literature, and more for a unique look at "home" in any number of richly imagined ways. Stylized illustration and text present homes that are tall, short, messy, clean, real, or fantastic. The detailed illustrations are sure to get readers thinking about homes of all types and what they can represent.

Imaginative Jack is ready to build the house of his dreams, complete with a racetrack, flying room, and gigantic slide. Jack's limitless creativity and infectious enthusiasm will inspire budding young inventors to imagine their own fantastical designs.

Send in the cranes! Bulldozers! Earthmovers! Would you like to watch how a building goes up? During the next twelve months, these construction workers are building a school. Check out these eight action-packed scenes for a bird's-eye view of the whole process. See how the workers make the foundation, add the walls, and put on the roof. Keep your eye on the calendar too. By spending a whole year at the building site, you can watch events unfold until the school is ready for students and teachers. [Amazon]

In this lively introduction to the world’s most beautiful buildings, readers take a journey around the globe with Speck the pigeon offering a "bird’s eye view" of the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and dozens of other buildings.

This ingeniously engineered book takes readers from the car-carrying Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California to the water-carrying Segovia Aqueduct in Spain to the people-carrying Ponte di Rialto in Italy. Readers young and old will delight in poring over the bridges and their settings, all impressively replicated and packed with details.

Recognizable constructions from childhood such as blocks and sandcastles and playful verse are juxtaposed to actual photos of architectural landmarks from around the globe. A note about the structure and the architects conclude this imaginative look at art and architecture.

Ever since he was a wee mite (a termite, that is), Roberto has wanted to be an architect. Discouraged by his woodeating family and friends, he decides to follow his dream to the big, bug city. There he meets a slew of not-so-creepy, crawly characters who spark in him the courage to build a community for them all. The mysterious architect chooses to remain anonymous, but ultimately can't avoid the grateful adulation of the carpenter ants, ladybugs, and house flies he has helped.

Some structures — like the Eiffel Tower and China’s Great Wall — are familiar. Others, however, are less well known like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the Kingda Ka. What they do share in common is that the y are all curious, a combination of imagination and science. Examine these curiosities in image and fascinating text which encourages thought and participation.

A roof, a door, some windows, a floor. All houses have them, but not all houses are alike. Some have wings (airplane homes), some have wheels (Romany vardoes), some float; some are made of straw, some of snow and ice. Everywhere people live, they adapt to their surroundings and create unique environments, using innovative techniques to provide that most basic of needs: shelter.

For children with a passion for drawing, or dreams of creating buildings, this book explores how architects really work, taking the young reader through the entire process for planning and designing a house. Learn about an architect’s four main drawings: the Site Plan, Floor Plan, Section, and Elevation ― including the concept of drawing each plan to scale.

Have you ever felt squashed? Squeezed? Pulled? Tugged? If so, then you know what it feels like to be a building! Here, with playful drawings and humorous text, award-winning author Forrest Wilson uses human figures (plus some dogs and rams) to show that architecture and people have more in common than you might have believed. This book will delight everyone who is fascinated with the buildings around us.