The Man Who Walked Between The Towers

The Man Who Walked Between The Towers
By Mordicai Gerstein

Whoa, this is an amazing story!  Author Gerstein has written a picture book about the true story of a Frenchman named Philippe Petit, who tightrope-walked between the two World Trade Center towers in New York City.  This happened in 1974 (the year I was born!), when the towers were first built.  By this way, this tightrope was stretched--illegally--a quarter of a mile up in the sky.  That's 1,340 feet!  The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in New York City, and some of the tallest in the world.  Mr. Petit, an "aerialist" by profession, figured out a way to sneak into the towers with a team of friends dressed as construction workers.  They shot an arrow, connected to a wire, from the top of one tower to the other.  And Philippe Petit danced and performed for over an hour on the wire while police waited to arrest him on the roof!
Why would someone do this?  Was Philippe Petit crazy?  These were the questions I found myself asking as I learned about this wild story.  A documentary film was made about Petit, the Twin Towers, and many other adventurous stunts he pulled off with beauty, grace and style.  This film is called "Man on Wire" (2008) and directed by James Marsh.  It's so worth seeing!  Mr. Petit himself talks about what drives him to perform at such dangerous heights, why he risks his life to tightrope-walk, and what it feels like to balance at the top of the world.
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and "Man on Wire" are also powerful tributes to the collapsed Twin Towers and the people who died on September 11, 2001 during the terrorist attacks.  The memory of Philippe Petit's brave act of artistry lives on in New York, just as the memories of the towers and those who perished live on.
(ISBN: 978-0-7613-1791-3)