Recommended Ages: Gr.

Plot Summary: A piece of steel beam was taken from 9/11, then reformed to put in the bow of the biggest Navy boat. This boat returned to NYC for a 10 year memorial. The ship's crest is symbolic of the recycled beam.

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Recurring Themes: 9/11, memories, memorial, tragedy, honor, respect, navy

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Personal Thoughts: Two things bring back many emotions in someone who was alive during this tragic event: the illustration of the nose of the plane touching one of the twin towers and the statistic of the number of people who died. Other than that, very little background information is given on 9/11 and the book focuses on taking the beam, recreating it, and putting it in the bow of a ship, although the word bow is not explained and the illustrations do not clarify. In other words, I think this book has much more meaning to those who are familiar with 9/11 and will cause lots more questions than answers. In some ways, that can be good for sensitive readers, but in other ways, I think it makes the book to simplified. However, the themes definitely come through.

Genre: informational text, narrative non-fiction

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Renewal, Rebirth, History, 9/11, Recycle, Growth

SEVEN AND A HALF TONS OF STEEL by Janet Nolan tells the extraordinary story of a navy ship built with steel from the World Trade Center tragedy.

After the World Trade Centers collapsed on 9/11, seven and a half tons of steel from the disaster site was transported to New Orleans and used in the bow of the USS New York. While Hurricane Katrina delayed the project, the ship was ultimately completed in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in New York.

Librarians will find this nonfiction picture book to be an age-appropriate story true story for elementary children. Rather than focusing on the tragedy itself, the author chooses to explore the uplifting story of rebuilding.

To learn more about the author, go to http://www.janetnolan.com/.

Published by Peachtree on August 1, 2016. ARC courtesy of the publisher. ( )

It has been 15 years since that infamous day in September when America was attacked by terrorists using "homegrown" or routine means - airplanes loaded with passengers - to wreak havoc on three American locations. New York was home to the World Trade Towers and airplanes were flown into the sides of these massive towers resulting in their crumbling into a mass of human death out of which immense strength grew. From this wreckage was retrieved a steel beam, and that is the beginning of the story of Seven and a Half Tons of Steel.

To say this picture book is intensely moving is simplification. The bold art vividly and movingly depicts the story of what is known in history as 9/11. Though not a full story of that day, the text conveys in terse prose the day, the dreaded event, the result, and the weeping. The art and text carry a darkness about them. The story doesn't try to convey the immense loss and sorrow or the depth of this event on the peoples, the city, and the nation because the story in this book is what happened from the rubble of this disaster and how America has used this ruination to forge strength and service and protection for America.

It is a story of how steel workers took a battered, broken beam of steel from the Towers. How they carried it from New York to Louisiana (a very long truck journey). How steel workers melted that broken, wrecked steel beam until it was amazingly fiery hot and molded it into material that was shaped to become.........the bow of the USS New York LPD 21!

Now that bow plows through the mighty oceans of the World carrying over 700 combat ready Marine Corps troops, their equipment, and supplies. It has a landing platform/dock. It is staffed by up to 360 U.S. Navy sailors. It is a symbol but it is also a piece of American strength.

I was moved to learn the symbolism of the shield. Each stroke and spot on the shield takes me back in my memory to that day, that time, those terrible deaths, the loss, and the victories. The men and women who served and the battles they won in the face of huge impossibilities to defeat the hopelessness that could have easily overtaken them, the American people.

I strongly encourage every library to acquire a copy of this for young people to read, and re-read, and then read again so that they can understand "Strength forged through sacrifice. Never forget." ( )