poetry Archives - Anastasia Suen

Up! Up! Up! Skyscraper
by Anastasia Suen (Author) and Ryan O’Rourke (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Snappy rhymes invite young readers to watch workers dig, pour, pound, and bolt a skyscraper into existence. Simple yet satisfying sidebars provide further information about each step in the construction process. Perfect for preschoolers and all those who dig diggers.

When my “building a house” small poem became the Raise the Roof picture book, I thought I was done with construction books, but my architect husband was working on a skyscraper and that made me curious! How did they make tall buildings stand up straight? (The Tower of Pisa is leaning to one side!)

This question led to more and with his expert advice, a new small poem became the picture book Up! Up! Up! Skyscraper! My clever editor wanted the last page of the book to fold up into a completed skyscraper, so the facts aren’t in the back after the poem like so many other books. As you can see, the facts (and lots of labels) written in prose accompany the poem page by page.

I’m very happy to say that this book won the 2017 Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Book Award.

Eureka

It’s #ThrowbackThursday!
Copyright © 2026 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved. (*bookstore affiliate)

Raise the Roof!
by Anastasia Suen (Author) and Elwood H. Smith (Illustrator)

Booktalk: My brothers built homes and my husband is a architect, so home construction has been a part of my life for years. I used our old construction photographs to help me write this 97-word picture book poem.

When the book was being illustrated, the editor asked me if the illustrator could add a dog to the book. I said yes. (We had a dog, so it didn’t seem like an unusual request.) Imagine my surprise when the page proofs for Raise the Roof came and the dog was a builder, too!

A year after the book was published, it came out again (with another publisher) as a PreK literacy program book, making this former Kindergarten ESL teacher very happy!