SOS

August 1, 2007
Gr 6-8-This collection recounts 13 disasters, both natural and manmade, and offers up occasionally gruesome accounts of tragedies from around the world. The stories are arranged chronologically, from the sinking of the "Asia" on Lake Huron in 1882 to Hurricane Katrina's devastation on the Gulf Coast in 2005. Each brief chapter focuses on young people who were caught up in the events and who survived the tragedy by sheer luck or displayed heroism in the face of terrible odds. The writing is occasionally sensationalized and overly dramatic, and the tangle of children's names, ages, and family connections can be difficult to sort through in any given story. There are no source notes, and this omission makes it difficult to verify many of the suppositions around the actions and/or dialogue that appear in most of the vignettes. Where applicable, photographs of people involved or the aftermath of the disaster are included, and they provide a visual push to the text. Students are often drawn to disaster stories and this collection will be no different, but its brevity may leave them wanting more information."Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2007
Disaster can make for thrilling drama, and Butts writes with taut excitement about 13 devastating eventsfloods, fires, explosions, mountain slides, and morefrom the 1891 Canadian Springhill Mine Disaster and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire to Chernobyl, the Tsunami of 2004, and Hurricane Katrina. In each chapter, he tells the story from the viewpoint of young victims, heroes, and survivors; and the personal, eyewitness accounts and occasional archival photos dramatize the cataclysmic events. Only Indians in Canada and the U. S. are not named, not even by nation; they are just referred to as Native. Another flaw is the lack of documentation; only a brief suggested reading list is included. But even readers who know about the big events will be caught by the passionate warning about global warming, and the stories of children today, in factories and sweatshops, who still work under conditions like those of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)