How Emily Saved the Bridge: The Story of Emily Warren Roebling and the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge is iconic, impressive in itself, and has an amazing history in several ways. This was the first bridge of its type to have been built under very difficult circumstances and is symbolic of New York City and beloved by many. Numerous books have been written about the bridge, its history and many other facets, and How Emily Saved the Bridge touches on many of those aspects, bringing an interesting story to young people in a captivating way. The beginning of the story sees a female engineer looking at the plaque at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge and telling the child with her the story that inspired her to become an engineer herself. This both places the story and indicates the reason that we might want to read the book.

How Emily Saved the Bridge includes much more than Emily’s “saving” the bridge, and author Frieda Wishinsky has included where Emily Warren came from and how she became educated enough to fulfill her destiny, her marriage to engineer Washington Roebling, the building of the bridge, and, most importantly, the part she played in the completion of the project. Then readers learn that Emily continued to challenge society and became a lawyer. On the last page are six amazing facts about the bridge, a list of sources and books for children.

The writing is clear and obviously well-researched while the speech balloons are allowed to be more imaginative. The only exception to this clarity is found in the two pages dealing with the use of caissons in building the foundations and Washington’s injury caused by his work there. These are complex concepts to get across in a children’s book. However, for anyone interested in this kind of information, it is written simply enough to work through the method and understand, especially with the support of the illustrations. For others, it is possible to skim over the technical details and move on to the rest of the story.

Natalie Nelson has created the appealing illustrations with digital collage and found photographs. Bright and detailed, the illustrations create an uplifting mood. In many ways, the pictures are realistic to the time period although liberties have been taken, as with the speech bubbles, in an imaginative and cheerful spirit. Emily seems to have a preference for green dresses, giving a pleasing continuity to her story as the central character. There are also plenty of details in the technical pages about the methods of building this type of bridge. The pictures of the bridge, itself, are appealing and, while still somewhat abstract, manage to illustrate the fabric of the brickwork beautifully.

How Emily Saved the Bridge is part biography, part engineering, part history and all interesting. Emily Warren Roebling is a fantastic subject, and there is something elegant and graceful about the suspension bridge that can only add to a good story.