A Storm Called Katrina
STARRED REVIEW The pair behind Dad, Jackie, and Me turn their attention to the harrowing events of Hurricane Katrina as seen through the eyes of a fictional child. Ten year- old Louis Daniel is African-American and a horn player like his idol, Louis Armstrong. He goes to bed during a fierce storm and awakens to encroaching water. Bootman s dramatic oil paintings and the boy s first-person narration provide realistic immediacy as the boy s family makes its way through their flooded neighborhood on a piece of someone s porch that was floating by. Uhlberg hints at the death toll: [M]y broom hit a pile of clothes. Mama covered my eyes. Don t look, Baby, she said. But I couldn t help looking. The dark-hued, realistic illustrations create a somber mood that refuses to lift even when the family finally reaches the Superdome. The boy s shiny cornet, saved from floodwaters, figures prominently in the family s experience at the chaotic stadium, giving comfort and continuity. Readers are in for a deeply personal and sometimes uncomfortable look at a disaster whose ramifications are still being felt. The book concludes with author notes and several photographs.Ages 7 11. (Aug.) ----Publishers WeeklySTARRED REVIEW A heartrending story of a New Orleans family s experience through Hurricane Katrina.Ten-year-old Louis Daniel goes to sleep hugging his brass cornet close as the winds of Hurricane Katrina begin to howl and rattle the house. In the morning, the family realizes that the levee has broken, and the water is quickly rising. They begin to make their way through the wreckage to the promised safety of the Superdome, with Louis Daniel and his mother riding on a piece of someone s porch as his father pulls them along past a plastic Christmas tree, an eager puppy that they cannot rescue and something that is probably a body in the water. The family makes it to the Superdome, but they eventually find themselves separated. Louis Daniel is sure he has to do something to find his father, but what? And what will happen to the family after they leave the Superdome? And to the friendly dog Louis had to leave behind in the rushing waters? Bootman s gorgeous paintings bring out the resilient character of the city even as he depicts the devastation it suffered. However, it is through the body language and the emotion in the faces of the mostly African-American cast of characters he creates that Bootman most precisely articulates what it was like to live through such a harrowing experience.Simple, affecting prose and intricate, inspired paintings make this one worth sharing for sure. (author s note). (Picture book. 9-12) --Kirkus Reviews"...Very realistic children's book to help educate those who were too young to remember. The poignant illustrations portray the story perfectly..." --Mysteries, etc. blog"...In the six years since hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana golf coast; this is the first picture book I have read that captures the pain and devastation in a manner suitable for young children..." --Read it Again Mom blogCan the enormity of a large-scale tragedy like 9/11, the Japanese tsunami or Hurricane Katrina be conveyed to school-age children without frightening them? How to describe the emotional toll without imposing a burden? It s a difficult balance.But it s one that the writer Myron Uhlberg and the illustrator Colin Bootman strike gracefully in A Storm Called Katrina, a fictional but realistic account of a 10-year-old boy who lives in New Orleans during the great hurricane of 2005 and its aftermath.Uhlberg and Bootman, the team behind Dad, Jackie, and Me, tell the story of Louis Daniel (yes, named after that Louis), a budding cornet player from the Ninth Ward, who bridles when his mother says, in the opening line, Hurricane s coming, baby. As he tells her, I m not a baby anymore, Mama.Still, as the wind picks up, Louis starts to worry, and when he and his parents are forced to evacuate their home, he understandably regresses. I held on to Mama and my horn as tight as I could. The story follows the family as they travel on a slab of broken porch to dry land and eventually to the dubious refuge of the Superdome. Uhlberg captures the events in language that needs no adornment. The air was hot and stinky in the overcrowded stadium. I was tired and hungry and wished we could go home.A model of understated storytelling, A Storm Called Katrina wisely steers clear of histrionics or political commentary yet remains true to its disturbing subject. The illustrations are equally muted. When Louis wields his broom as an oar to hit a pile of clothes, Bootman shows us nothing more than a shapeless wash of color in the rising waters. Mama covered my eyes. Don t look, Baby, she said. But I couldn t help looking. Bootman s textured oil paintings convey everything young readers need to know in Louis s dark gaze.And when Louis and his mother become separated from his father, the boy finds the wherewithal, despite his pain and confusion, to devise a plan. Grabbing his cornet, he runs onto the stadium s field. I closed my eyes, lifted my horn, and played a song my granddaddy had taught me, Home, Sweet Home.By the end, Louis is assuredly a baby no more. Children who read his story will be the wiser for it as well. With an author s note, photographs and a list of resources for children, this moving introduction to Hurricane Katrina imparts its lessons with a restraint that powerfully increases their gravity. --New York Times"...Very realistic children's book to help educate those who were too young to remember. The poignant illustrations portray the story perfectly..." --Mysteries, etc. blog"...In the six years since hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana golf coast; this is the first picture book I have read that captures the pain and devastation in a manner suitable for young children..." --Read it Again Mom blog