The Crane (New York Review Children's Collection) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I share the high esteem of the other reviewers. I would not describe the book as about war, though war occurs. The book started slowly but ripened to a lovely fullness in the end. I read it to my kids and they enjoyed it. More than anything I found it about duty and finding meaning and joy in the faithful accomplishment of one's lifework. When I must work on a weekend or at night, the kids seem to understand when I tell them, "I am the crane man!" This is a book that will be welcomed in the homes of all those whose lives are lived with a proud and joyous devotion to family, friends, and work. It brought to mind the sentiment at the end of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, "As the lively
and sparkling emotions of her early married live
cohered into an equable serenity, the finer movements
of her nature found scope in discovering to the
narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had
once learnt it) of making limited opportunities
endurable; which she deemed to consist in the cunning
enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of
those minute forms of satisfaction that offer
themselves to everybody not in positive pain; which,
thus handled, have much of the same inspiring effect
upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced."


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In an ever-expanding city, one young man claims the job of his dreams, operator of the tallest crane around. Since others envy his position, he never leaves his crane, always eager for the day—and work—to begin.As the seasons pass, man and machine almost become one. "The crane was a giant with iron sinews, and the craneman was its heart." Then people begin to hoard their goods, grinning ravens multiply throughout the land, and war is at hand. But the craneman never falters, remaining at his post even when the land is flooded, ready for reconstruction to begin.

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