Cutters, Carvers & the Cathedral

From School Library Journal Grade 3-6?Despite the intriguing gargoyle on the cover and the word "cathedral" in the title, this is not a book about gothic architecture or about churches. It is about construction. In clear, full-color photographs, Ancona focuses on workers in stone, from the skilled cutters in Indiana who quarry the great blocks of limestone to the masons and carvers who work on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Through a neighborhood apprentice program young men and women from Africa and Latin America, Asia and Europe work under the direction of master carvers and masons on the still-unfinished cathedral. The slim text ends with the information that the building project has been halted due to lack of funding. Since there is no information on the church itself, or on the history of cathedral architecture, this book remains essentially a story of a model training program that no longer exists, a handsomely photographed tribute to a brief experiment in multicultural cooperation.?Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From