Drowned City - a review

 The National Council of Teachers of English recently named Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans by Don Brown (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) the winner of its prestigious Orbis Pictus Award.

The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award  was established in 1989 for promoting and recognizing excellence in the writing of nonfiction for children. The name Orbis Pictus, commemorates the work of Johannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Pictus—The World in Pictures (1657), considered to be the first book actually planned for children. (from the NCTE website)

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans is a spare, but powerful graphic novel account of the tragedy that befell the City of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  Don Brown researches and illustrates Drowned City in his usual fashion.  It has extensive Source Notes and a corresponding Bibliography.  Every direct quote is sourced.  The illustrations are serious and in muted colors to accurately convey the gravity of the events; but they are sufficiently vague to spare the individual horror experienced by victims, survivors, and rescuers.  As he has done with other topics, Don Brown creates a focused, accurate, and powerful story - suitable for visual learners and for readers in a wide age range.


Other Hurricane Katrina books reviewed on this site:

• Saint Louis Armstrong Beach 
• A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Also by Don Brown and reviewed by Shelf-employed:

• America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell
• The Great American Dust Bowl 
• All Stations! Distress!: April 15, 1912: The Day the Titanic Sank 
• Let it Begin Here!: April 19, 1775: The Day the American Revolution Began

Storm - a review

Napoli, Donna Jo. 2014. Storm. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Storm, told in first person, present tense prose, presents the story of the biblical flood through the eyes of 16-year-old Sebah, an unlikely stowaway aboard Noah's massive ark.

The story unfolds in chapters that correspond with the biblical timeline - 40 days of rain, 150 days for the waters to recede, 10 months until the mountains become visible, 40 days until the release of a bird, etc.
(All can be found in the 7th and 8th chapters of Genesis.)

After chronicling Sebah's three week struggle to survive the deluge with her companion Aban, the chapter titled, "Day 22," ends,

It's another creature.  Like the first, but larger.  And obviously male.  He perches in a round hole high in the side of the ship.  There is a line of such holes.  And I passed another line below as I climbed.
A whole ship of these creatures.
I think of letting go, disappearing into the sea. I let loose one hand and look down. The sea is far below. I feel the energy seep from me. It would be so easy to just give up.
...
The creature behind me nudges my dangling hand.
I reach for the male's hand, and I am half pulled, half shoved up through the hole and into the ship.

Ms. Napoli clearly put an enormous amount of thought into the logistics of preparing for a massive exodus of animals with little or no possibility of resupply for more than a year. She details the grueling work of the voyage.  While Sebah struggles to remain hidden and survive in the enclosure of the bonobos, Noah and his family have a huge responsibility to the ark's inhabitants. The animals must be secure from each other, their enclosures must be cleaned, they must be fed, they must have fresh water. Their survival is imperative. The family collects rainwater, they dry and ration supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables for the ark's herbivores, they fish to obtain fresh food for the carnivores. The family's nerves grow frayed under the stress.  They begin to argue and turn against one another.  The hidden Sebah sees much,

"Respect!" Noah claps his hands above his head, and dust flies through the dim light.  "And haven't you learned arguing gets us nowhere?"  He takes his ax back from Ham. "The bottom deck stinks.  I have to breathe shallow to stand going down there.  Everyone has to help Japheth and me clean it out.  Today! Let our wives feed and water the animals of this deck and the top —while we shovel waste.  Noah goes up the ladder with Japheth at his heels.

How you will perceive this book will depend greatly upon how you perceive the biblical story of the great flood. Arguments could be made for classification as historical fiction, alternative history, survival fiction, dystopian fiction, or fantasy. However you choose to view the book, it cannot be denied that it is a thought-provoking look at the nature of humans and animals, of loss and love, of despair and hope.

An Author's Note, Timeline from Genesis Verses, and Bibliography are included.  Visit the author's website http://www.donnajonapoli.com/ya.html#STORM to read an excerpt.

(I'm not a Russell Crowe fan, but now I think that I might want to watch the movie, Noah, just to see another perspective.)

(My copy of the book was provided by the publisher, and was an Advance Reader Copy)

I Survived: The Japanese Tsunami, 2011 - a review

At last year's KidLitCon, attendees were reminded to blog for a particular purpose and audience. I selfishly blog primarily for myself - to help me remember and gather my thoughts about the many children's books that I read in pursuit of my favorite job - connecting children with the "perfect" book, or in librarian terms, reader's advisory.  If along the way if I can save you some time or help you in a similar pursuit, so much the better.  This is why I don't always read the most talked about books, the most award-winning books, or the books with the greatest literary merit. I want to read what children like, and  a boy in my book club told me emphatically what he likes, I Survived books! "I've read them all," he told me.

I must confess that despite their popularity, I hadn't read any! Fortuitously, however, Scholastic sent me a galley copy of their upcoming, I Survived; The Japanese Tsunami, 2011 by Lauren Tarshis.

This is the 8th book in the series.  Written for grades 2-5, these are small, short chapter books; each chapter is only a few pages. The Japanese Tsunami, 2011, contains 13 chapters and is 83 pages, not including the back matter - facts, author's note, and resource materials.

I assume that most of the books are similar - a child survives one of history's worst natural or man made disasters.  In The Japanese Tsunami, it is Ben, an American born child visiting his Japanese grandfather, along with his mother and brother.  His father, an Air Force pilot, recently died in Iraq.

Miraculously, although Ben is swept away from the rest of the family in the tsunami, they all survive and are eventually reunited.  It's not a likely story, but here's what there is to like about it:

• Though it was written very soon (too soon?) after the disaster, it should be remembered that kids don't often pay attention to the news, and to them, March 11, 2011, may seem like a lifetime ago.  It's helpful to remind them of world-changing events.

• Books like the ones in the I Survived series help bring history alive for young people.  It's easier to relate to history if it is seen through the eyes of someone in a similar situation to one's own.

• The I Survived books are short and popular - great choices for reluctant readers.

And finally,

• Author Lauren Tarshis understands the freshness, the immensity, and the gravity of this particular disaster, and treats it with respect.  It was, after all, three separate and devastating disasters - an earthquake of epic proportions (lasting five minutes), a tsunami (hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet high), and a nuclear meltdown that sent more than 200,000 people fleeing from their homes.

In her author's notes, "A Triple Disaster," she notes that writing about the Japanese Tsunami was unlike writing the other I Survived books in which she could imagine herself in the shoes of her protagonists.  Regarding the Japanese Tsunami, 2011, she writes, the

...disaster was so enormous, I really can't being to imagine what it was like - the terror, the destruction, the exhaustion, the despair.

 What I do feel - deep in my heart - is admiration for the millions of people of the Tohoku region and throughout eastern Japan who are rebuilding their towns and their lives, who are determined to move forward ..

Due on shelves in September, 2013, this one's sure to be popular.

The art in my copy was not final, but the book will apparently have several black and white illustrations.

Kids can take an I Survived Survival Skills Quiz on the Scholastic website.

Horrors of History: City of the Dead - a review

Anderson, T. Neill. 2013. Horrors of History: City of the Dead. New York: Charlesbridge.

City of the Dead is gripping historical fiction that strays very little from historical accounts of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. In ten chapters, T. Neill Anderson chronicles the unnamed hurricane from the dawn of its approach to the dawn of its passing. Employing fictional and actual persons of the time, the story unfolds from various points of view and parts of town - alternating between the orphans and sisters of the beachfront St. Mary's Orphanage, which had only three actual survivors, the inhabitants of the Lucas Terrace Apartments* located several blocks from the beach on the north side of town, Dr. Samuel Young in his sturdy home closer to the center of town, and Charlie, an African American laborer. Neill added Charlie's ordeal to the story to reflect the racial diversity that existed in Galveston at the time but is not reflected in the written annals of the storm.

The circumstances and dialogue are invented,

"It's a good thing we stooped by the grocery store last night," Alice muttered. There were almost twenty people in the parlor now -- they had all fled their houses when the flooding had become too great.The increasingly shrill cries of the cats reverberated through the living room,

But the photos, maps, and important details are real and accurate. A Prologue, Epilogue, and Author's Note put the story into context. Photo Credits are also included.


From the Epilogue:

Even to this day the Galveston hurricane of September 8, 1900, remains the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.  Approximately eight thousand men, women, and children lost their lives -- in other words, about one in six Galvestonians are believed to have died, either in the hurricane or in the flood that followed.

City of the Dead: Galveston Hurricane, 1900, is the first  in the new  Horrors of History series, created for readers from age 11 - 14. Gripping, compelling and tragic, City of the Dead debuts in August, 2013.

• * Title: Lucas Terrace under which 51 people lie buried, Galveston
• Summary: Remnants of multi-story building, bricks and lumber strewn in the wake of the 1900 hurricane and flood, Galveston, Texas.
• Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-123884 (b&w film copy neg. of right half stereo)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Note:

Adult readers interested in this topic may enjoy Isaac's Storm (Random House, 2000), a true account of the disaster, the politics of weather, and of U.S. Weather Meteorologist and hurricane survivor, Isaac Cline, stationed in Galveston at the time of the hurricane. Sadly, weather politics exists today as well as one can see from the competing information provided by European and American hurricane tracking models.  A USA Today article on the deficiencies of the US model in predicting Hurricane Sandy may be found here.

Also of interest is the National Hurricane Center's page on the history of tropical cyclone naming.  In 1900, at the time of the Galveston Hurricane, it was not customary to name hurricanes.  That practice was officially adopted in the United States in 1953.

Flood - a review

Villa, Alvaro F. 2013. Flood. North Mankato, MN: Capstone. 

(Advance Reader Copy provided by NetGalley)

If you read my blog regularly or read my monthly posts on the ALSC Blog, you'll know that my family was one of the tens of thousands affected by Hurricane Sandy.  It is for that reason, that I requested a copy of Flood for review.  I now have first-hand knowledge of the devastation caused by a hurricane, but more importantly in my area of the Jersey Shore, by flooding; I feel that I have a certain sad connection with the topic.  While I say that, I am also mindful of the fact that though thousands may be affected by the same natural disaster, no two personal disasters are the same.  There is a commonality, but yet, each town, each neighborhood, each family, each individual, must deal with a different set of difficulties.  Because of this, I approached Flood with trepidation and apprehension.  It was obviously not written in response to Superstorm Sandy, but nevertheless, it arrives at a time when people are particularly vulnerable.  To date, more than half a million disaster assistance claims have been filed with FEMA, with much of the damage caused by flooding.

Forgive me if I reveal the entire story, but this one I must follow through to the end.

Alvaro F. Villa's Flood appears to be the story of a flood more typical to the Midwest than along the nation's coastlines. In this wordless picture book, a family's modest home stands alone in the middle of a beautiful, grassy, rolling countryside, a river flowing behind. Two children and a dog play alongside a weathered picket fence.  Only the lone dark bird flying overhead hints at danger to come.  In the evening, the family spends a relaxing evening indoors.  Dawn brings the first hint of trouble as bad weather moves in.  The next days are spent in anxious discussion, preparation, and finally, evacuation. A violent and raging storm arrives, the river rises, wreaking destruction on the idyllic landscape.  In an eerie depiction of the storm's aftermath, the lone bird now sits upon the stump of a broken tree - looming large and black against the reddish hues of the dawning sky and the browns of the sandbags and silt left in the yard.  The family's muddied SUV returns.  From a distance the house can be seen, damaged but still standing.  The hopelessness of the family, the agonized tears of the young daughter are palpable as they survey the wreckage.  But of course, that is not the end.  It can never be.  No matter one's sense of hopelessness, helplessness - a start must be made. There is no other choice.  And so the rebuilding begins.  As the family paints and replants, the palette brightens and smiles return. The house, in its new coat of paint looks better than ever. It's not the same.  It will never be.  But the family is together and they have survived.

I passed this book along to my husband and children.  Of course, they are not librarians or book reviewers or educators. I asked them only because the experience is fresh in their minds.  My daughter had a keen observation.  There is a scene in which the family is spending the night in another location, having evacuated their home; the children are shown sleeping on the floor (as so many children, including mine, have recently done for days, weeks and months on end) while the parents and dog huddle in bed watching the television, presumably for news about the flood.  In a powerful use of symbolism, Villa shows their calm refuge surrounded by dark and raging flood waters - a powerful reminder of what is occurring elsewhere; but as my daughter pointed out, also easily misinterpreted by young readers who may be frightened by the water that appears to be menacingly approaching their makeshift beds.  Although beautiful and moving, and ultimately uplifting, this is not a picture book for preschoolers.  Appropriately, the publisher suggests Flood for Grades 1-3.

Is Flood  hopeful? Cautionary? Bibliotherapeutic? Empathetic? Preparatory?  I suspect Alviro F. Villa intended to offer hope.  I also suspect that much depends upon who reads it and when. 

Due on shelves February 1, 2013. 

The Great Molasses Flood - a review

Kops, Deborah. 2012. The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.

As soon as I read Jeff Barger's review of The Great Molasses Flood on NC Teacher Stuff, I knew that this book would be next on my "to be read" pile.

Since then, it's cropped up on blogs all across the Kidlitosphere.  There's something about this horrific, yet freakishly bizarre story, that is simply irresistible.

I am fond of "event books" that offer a broader view of a particular occurrence, placing it into the context of the time.  This is such a book, offering a look at the American justice system, the anarchist movement of the early 20th century, the lifestyles of immigrants, the influence of big business, and the practical applications for science and engineering in the practice of law.  All of these elements cross paths in this chronological story of a deadly explosion of a Boston molasses tank holding over two million gallons of the sticky brown sweetener.

Because the incident ended up as the subject of intense litigation, Kops had ample resources, in addition to newspaper accounts.  The legal transcript of the trial fills forty volumes.

Kops' writing style is simple and compelling,

The View from Above
At about 12:40 the brakeman on the elevated line was standing near the window of a passenger train, which had left South Station about five minutes earlier.  As the train neared the molasses tank, the brakeman heard a loud noise, like metal ripping apart.  He looked down to see the molasses tank split wide open and a wave of molasses heading toward the tracks. 
     As the train came around a curve, there was another surprise.  The molasses hurled a great chunk of the tank against two columns supporting the elevated tracks.  A moment later one of the El supports bent as if it was just a skinny twig.  Park of the El's tracks, which the train had passed over just seconds before, sagged toward the road below.

Scattered sepia colored insets offer additional and helpful contextual information such as the burgeoning women's and anarchist movements, and an explanation of the urgency to use the stored molasses (prohibition was about to become the law of the land).

I did find fault with two stray comments that I thought "cringe-worthy" because they seemed dismissive of the catastrophic nature of the event.

A sea of molasses quickly surrounded them.  Antonio ran for his life, but he was no match for the tide.  It dragged him along, shoving him into a curb. Ouch! 

The young man lost two teeth and a sister.  Ouch?  The other is similarly cavalier -

Mrs. O'Brien Loses More Than Her Wash

Mrs. O'Brien, in fact, lost her home, which rode the molasses wave right off its foundation and into the nearby park.
These are minor aberrations, however, in an otherwise fascinating and well-told story.


Booktalk The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 to your fiction readers, too!  Freakish appeal and a generous amount of photos give this one cross-genre appeal.  Highly recommended. 



Finally, I think it's noteworthy that this is such a bizarre disaster, that it even warrants an entry on the always reliable, Snopes.com!

Claim: A fatal wave of molasses swept through Boston in January 1919.
TRUE.

Other reviews @

• NC Teacher Stuff
• Fuse #8
• Wrapped in Foil

It's Nonfiction Monday.  Today's host is 100 Scope Notes.

Three Rivers Rising

Richards, Jame. 2010. Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood. New York: Knopf.

This book debuted in April 2010 to well-earned, rave reviews. In sparse verse, author Jame Richards, tells a story of devoted high society sisters, Celestia and Estrella, Whitcomb, their coldly calculating, businessman father, a miner's son, Peter, Maura, the wife of a Pennsylvania railroad engineer, and Kate, an obsessive-compulsive young widow struggling to find a purpose in life. Their lives become intertwined due to the tragically preventable Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889. Chapters of free-form verse alternate between the voices of the six characters.  An author's note separates the facts of the actual flood from the story. More than 2200 people died in the flood, including entire families.

The Johnstown Flood is the backdrop, but Three Rivers Rising is foremost a story of society, class, and first (or forbidden) love.
Highly recommended for grades 8 and up.


A reader's guide is available for teachers, librarians and book clubs.

The aftermath of the Johnstown Flood.

(Photograph from Wikimedia Commons, originally taken by an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

Information about the flood and its victims is available from the Johnstown Area Heritage Association.