A young girl’s love of the coquíes’ nightly song helps her survive a destructive hurricane with her family. Includes author’s note.
Maxy is a happy puppy who lives with Clarita and her family in a house filled with music and laughter on the island of Puerto Rico. On sunny days, Clarita and Maxy go to the park or on adventures under the flamboyant tree. On rainy days, they stay inside and play games or read books.
But one day, Maxy sees everyone rushing around, putting things in boxes. Someone says, “María is coming!” That night, Hurricane María roared ashore; there was thunder, lightning and lots of rain. Maxy was terrified! Finally, the power went out and the house and everything around it was completely dark. The next day when they went outside, they saw destroyed homes, flooded roads and knocked-down trees-including their beloved flamboyant! There was no electricity for a long time, and everyone had to stand in long lines for food, gas and even water to drink.
Eventually, power is restored and Maxy thinks everything is going to be okay. Until one day, the clouds start to gather and he hears thunder and whistling winds. Trembling and whining, he races under the bed! Eventually, and with the help of loved ones, Maxy like many children who go through natural disasters learns to overcome his fear and appreciate the benefits of rain.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XIV, Issue 4.
A vivid and poignant portrayal of a boy and his town in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Italy.
After surviving the earthquake and tsunami, Shy manages to make it back to land but he is far from safe because a secret his cruise ship co-worker, Addie, shared with him is one that people have killed for, and now that Shy knows, he has become a moving target.
Mei Mei and Chang’s life in their Chinese village takes a drastic turn after Yangtze River begins to rise and sweeps the houses, trees, animals, and people along its path.
After an earthquake destroys California and a tsunami wrecks the luxury cruise ship where he is a summer employee, high schooler Shy confronts another deadly surprise.
For several months, Quebec illustrator Roge prepared a series of portraits of Haitian children. Students of Camp Perrin wrote that accompanying poems, which create, with flowing consistency, Haiti My Country. These teenaged poets use the Haitian landscape as their easel. The nature that envelops them is quite clearly their main subject. While misery often storms through Haiti in the form of earthquakes, cyclones, or floods, these young men and women see their surrounding nature as assurance for a joyful, confident future.
In a poor village outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Serafina works hard to help her family, but dreams of going to school and becoming a doctor–then the earthquake hits and Serafina must summon all her courage to find her father and still get medicine for her sick baby brother as she promised.
Makis and his moher Sofia escape a devastating Greek earthquake which has claimed his father’s life. North London is a ver different place – but Makis quickly wins a covetted place in the school football team. Unlike her son, Sofia, isolated by her grief and lack of English, sinks into depression. Makis has a brilliant idea to help her – using books from school he begins to teach her to read. But competing loyalites mean that sooner or later, something has to give and his hard-won reputation at school appears to be in ruins.
In Edwidge’s story, Junior is trapped under his pancaked house for 8 whole days. After he is saved, people ask him repeatedly: “What did you do all this time? Were you scared? Did you cry?””I played,” he answers. And so with each page, we see how he played in his mind every day he was trapped–how he played marbles with his friends, won the best solo part in the choir, biked through St. Marc with his little sister, and ate the sweetest mango.Hope, love, and warmth dance across each page, reminding us that sometimes it is the simplest beauties that help us find our strength.Niki, the real boy whom this story is loosely based on, was pulled from the rubble after being trapped for 8 days. He was rescued by New York Task Force 1, a search-and-rescue team made up of New York City police- and firemen. They had to cut through three slabs of concrete and countless other pieces of debris before his mother could crawl in to coax Niki and his sister out. When he finally made it out of the wreckage, Niki did so with a beaming smile and wide-open arms–the image of hope.** The photograph taken of Niki by Mathew McDermott as they pulled him from the wreckage is being called “the iconic image” of this disaster. We are embracing its visibililty by using an illustration echoing the photograph for the cover of the book and printing the photograph in the back matter.** In addition, this project is charity driven. Both Edwidge and Alix are donating a portion of their advances to Haitian aid organizations. Scholastic and their vendors are contributing portions of their costs for the production of this book.