Concrete: From the Ground Up (Material Marvels)

Concrete is all around us. We walk on it, drive on it, dance on it. It is over our heads, under our feet, and surrounds the rooms in which we live. But what is it really? And where did it come from? This fun book is a great introduction and takes readers back thousands of years to ancient Turkey and the first known use of concrete. Even though the structures were built over ten thousand years ago, they are still in good shape. Of course, the Roman Empire widely used concrete in many of their greatest projects that still stand today.

But then concrete fell out of favor for centuries. A British civil engineer, John Smeaton, in the 1700s needed a material to build a lighthouse that wouldn’t burn or blow down in storms. He did a lot of experimenting with different materials and came up with a new recipe for concrete. This began a new era in building that gave us great bridges and skyscrapers and so much more.

Author Larissa Theule has written a kid-friendly history of this amazing material using humor to keep young readers engaged. Clever illustrations by Steve Light are the perfect completion to the story.