You Can Too!

At first, You Can Too! The ABCs of Construction Tech by Mark Wille (available at amazon.com) seems like any number of kid’s alphabet books following the familiar format “A is for …” and so forth. In this case, each letter is drawn in black and white and is accompanied by the author’s riff on what each letter stands for in the world of construction. For Wille, who wears hats at the Build Show, Passive House Accelerator, and Illinois Green Alliance, that world is full of high-performance homes.

To most adults we spoke with, the book seems like a good idea but, they speculated, might be a bit too plain for older kids, and—with terms like “biophilic design,” “Manual J,” and “net zero”—a bit too complex for younger kids. Clearly, we adults didn’t see the creative possibilities that Wille envisioned and were realized when Owen (5) and Emmett (10) got their hands on the book.

“You can too!” is an avowal that the readers can create this book, too. And each page affirms that they can grow up to build, renovate, and design houses. The book is a blank slate for the reader’s artwork, and the accompanying words become ideas to explore. Like, “What exactly is ‘the red door of truth’?” Emmett asked. That question and “What’s a ‘passive house’?” required an online search with his mom that led to an article by Jake Bruton on JLConline.com and a news report about architect Greg Chasen’s house in LA that survived the Palisades Fire earlier this year.

“The book sparked whole conversations,” mom and JLC art director Alice Ashe explained. “It’s not a book we could just hand to our children without some guidance. But once we jumped in, the whole family learned from it.”