The Rope Walk

In The Rope Walk, Carrie Brown crafts a luminous story of a young girl's coming of age during a crucial summer in New England. On her tenth birthday Alice meets two visitors to her quiet town: Theo, the African American grandson of her father's best friend, and Kenneth, an artist who has come home to convalesce. Theo forms an instant bond with Alice that will indelibly change them both. The pair in turn befriend Kenneth, and decide to build a “rope walk” through the woods for him, allowing to make his way through the outdoor world he has always loved. But their good intentions lead to surprising consequences, and Alice soon learns how different the world of children and adults really are.

The story of a daring tightrope walk between skyscrapers, as seen in Robert Zemeckis's The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In 1974, French aerialist Philippe Petit threw a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spent an hour walking, dancing, and performing high-wire tricks a quarter mile in the sky. This picture book captures the poetry and magic of the event with a poetry of its own: lyrical words and lovely paintings that present the detail, daring, and--in two dramatic foldout spreads-- the vertiginous drama of Petit's feat. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is the winner of the 2004 Caldecott Medal, the winner of the 2004 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Picture Books, and the winner of the 2006 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children's Video.

Set in the late seventies, Th e Ropewalk is about the clash between ideals and unexpected realities. Egan Drummond, a twice-divorced history teacher, takes a job at a remote boarding school on the coast of Maine to escape mainstream society and pursue a long-cherished dream to complete a research project and make a name for himself as an historian. Living in an old rope factory that serves as the school dormitory, he looks forward to being alone during the Christmas break so that nothing will disturb his research. But he quickly discovers that another teacher, Margaret Gillespie, is still there with her young daughter. Margaret's convinced there's someone walking the halls at night, and Egan is the only person she can turn to. Doubtful and at first annoyed, he finds himself not only caught up in the events of her life, but also on a journey back from the edge of loneliness to another chance as a man. His life seems back on track, but as his research begins to uncover evidence that could change the nation's perspective on Native American history, the elusive presence in the building becomes more threatening, leaving him with the choice of guarding what he's learned, or making himself famous at the cost of everything he's come to love.