The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Gerstein, Mordicai. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. Illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. Macmillan Publishers, Lerner Publishing Group, 2003. 44 Pages.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein, tells the story of a street performer who changed the world. This book is based on a man named Philippe Petit who walked on a wire between the Twin Towers. Petit was a street performer who one day decided to walk between the World Trade Center towers. Gerstein takes the readers on Petit’s mission to walk the towers. Gerstein describes Petit’s feelings of freedom while he is out on the wire. However, the police are alerted and Petit eventually comes off. His punishment from the judge is to perform in the park for the children.

There are lots of great images that depict the height at which Petit was walking. Gerstein uses techniques like straight lines and vanishing points to illustrate how high Petit was.

He also shows the horizon as curved to emphasize the height. When the towers were built, many people did not like them because they looked ugly. After Petit walked on the wire, people learned to love the towers and saw them as an icon to New York City. In the illustrations, the towers radiate a sense of power and strength.

“Many winds whirled up from between the towers, and he swayed with them. He could feel the towers breathing. He was not afraid. He felt alone and happy and absolutely free.”

They were so high in the sky that people look up to them in awe when Petit was performing on the wire.

This book addresses metaphysics, which is the study of reality. This book would inspire several questions from children today. Some questions would be, “Why are the towers gone?” and “Why did Philippe walk on the wire?” It is questionable as to whether the children should have prior knowledge of 9/11 before reading this book. However, the book does not mention 9/11 at all; only older readers would know why the towers are no longer standing. Perhaps Gerstein’s goal was to memorialize the great part about the towers.

He shifted the focus from a terrorizing event to a memory of happiness. This book can be used to teach children about what has happened in this country. It can teach them that even though the towers are no longer standing, they will last forever in our memory.