The Great Bridge Lowering

The Great Bridge Lowering is an open-ended storybook/activity book about a town that wants a bridge built to span the river that divides it. The bridge is to be built in a factory and lowered into place by helicopters. The plan was well-researched, but the town insisted on using inexpensive materials over the protestations of the architect, who said that better materials were a must if the design was to work. Now, as the bridge is being lowered, it begins to break up, and it is a crisis. Readers face the challenge of coming up with a plan to save the day and get the bridge in place safely. Author Sandra Warren offers a vast array of ideas for ways in which children can respond to this challenge creatively, both in words and illustrations, but the book's activities allow them to go beyond simply responding to the problem of getting the bridge lowered safely. Children might suggest a better solution to the problem than that chosen by the city council, or they could suggest "crazy combos" of a bridge and other objects. They might write an autobiography of a bridge, imagine themselves as a bridge and tell what sort of bridge and where, write an eye-witness account of the events that begin with the potential breakup of the bridge in the air, and nearly a dozen other possibilities. Each of the suggested activities is given shape and form by a page for children to record their responses. Target subjects: Creative Problem Solving; English Language Arts; Divergent Thinking. Suggested for ages 8 through high school.