The High Line A park to look up to

In this accessible, cinematic history, Tentler-Krylov (Building Zaha) shows how New York City's High Line rallied a community and revolutionized public green space. The book opens with a bang: balletic, digitally enhanced watercolors show a street-level freight train barreling toward the city's West Side factories as historical residents run for their lives. Elevating the railway in the 1930s helps to alleviate the danger, but the once-bustling tracks are abandoned within 50 years. They fill with wildflowers and grasses in the spring and are blanketed with snow in the winter, creating "a constantly changing, silent, forgotten world in the sky." When demolition seems inevitable, community members envision a new life for the newly dubbed High Line, and in scenes that give off a stylish, palpable energy and reflect the city's diversity, they organize, plan, and plant, creating a park that winds its verdant way between high-rises and becomes a model for the world. The author doesn't sidestep the rapid gentrification brought about by the park's popularity, ending with the hope that the same indomitable community spirit that made the park a reality will address economic inclusion, as well. An author's note and timeline conclude. Ages 4--8. Agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (May)

A short history of the elevated park constructed along an abandoned rail line in New York City. Showing her background as an architect, Tentler-Krylov tells a tale that is more about structures, purposes, and visionary design features than people--though both leading figures in the still-ongoing enterprise and local residents in the affected neighborhoods do receive due attention, particularly in the substantial afterword. If the resulting narrative may seem a bit abstract to younger readers, it nonetheless documents a real triumph of urban renewal and innovative land use. Readers learn how tracks built to carry trainloads of supplies right into factories on Manhattan's lower West Side were abandoned to weeds and weather until a group of concerned citizens envisioned a place where "trees and flowers would bloom overhead, and new cafés and art galleries would sprout on the streets below." (Gentrification is touched on briefly in the narrative and more so in the backmatter.) Saved from demolition and turned section by section into a greenway with places to walk, sit, see art, and look out over the streets below, the High Line has sparked an economic boom for the area and inspired similar reclamatory projects in other large cities. In the bright, stylish watercolors, diverse crowds of figures work and socialize both on bustling city streets and, later, on swooping pathways amid abundant carpets of well-kept wildflowers and grassy swards. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A vibrant, if somewhat formalized, tribute. (timeline, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.