A quaint little text with simple words enjoyed by young children. This book slotted nicely into a large construction based interest of my class. I enjoyed the diversity and variety of job roles. Overall my class enjoyed the book, although they showed a bit of a divide in their interests. Several began strong and enjoyed the clear words they could read and follow, however, lost interest in the story when the pattern changed to listing job roles. Others in my class enjoyed the book from start to finish, as they do with anything which relates to construction or building.

When their father leaves his lunch behind one day, two children pursue him to his construction work site, witnessing the building and breaking, breaking and building, that together make up the process of creating structures...

With a minimal text and his signature eye-popping artwork, author/illustrator Steve Light crafts a lovely picture-book tribute to the creation of architectural wonders in Builders & Breakers. His afterword, which contains more text than the entire rest of the book, discusses his love of classical, Gothic and art deco styles of architecture. Having greatly enjoyed Light's Have You Seen My Dragon? and Have You Seen My Monster?, I really appreciated this one, with its return to that same illustrative style. I don't know that I would have followed the 'story' that well, if I hadn't already known what it was going in, but leaving that issue aside, this is one I would recommend, both to Steve Light fans, and to any child who enjoys tales about construction sites and/or the construction process. ( )

Working off of a child's love of construction, the book is nearly guaranteed to appeal to younger readers. The story itself is simple with effective repetition to emphasis the building/breaking vocabulary. The artwork truly shines and brings the concepts to life. It is the layers of color and texture that really capture the readers' eyes. ( )

This is the cutest little book. I have a young son and he loves to build things. I entered this book giveaway because of him. When it came in I was so excited to read it with him. Now it is one of his favorite books.

If you know a little builder, they will love this book. When a young brother and sister need to take lunch to their father working at an urban construction site, they have all kinds of adventures along the way, seeing how people build large buildings in the city—huge construction tools and machines. The illustrations are charming, the pictures tell the story so a child does not even have to read to enjoy it, even very young children will enjoy it. And, the builders are not just white men, there are some women and builders of different races/ethnicities too. ( )