On my way to #alaac18

Today is a travel day. I am scheduled to land at 3:15 pm which means I will probably not get to attend Michelle Obama’s opening session at 4 pm. I am a bit disappointed, but I know the few days I spend here will be filled with all sorts of other celebrity moments, the highlight of which will be the Sibert Awards ceremony on Monday morning.

For the last month, every time I spoke with my mom she’d ask “Have you been to New Orleans yet?” And then she’d add, “It’s on my bucket list.”

Well, she didn’t get there, so it is my intention to go and take her spirit with me. She was a lot less inhibited than I  – have I got a Cartagena story to tell – but I will do my best celebrate in a way she would enjoy.

The Return of Fall Rains

Almost everyone I know is relieved at the weather change. Fall seems to be back: they sky is grey and it seems to have rained overnight. A big El Niño debate is raging: will it be really rainy or really cold?

One of my first winters in Portland, an El Niño year,  it was so rainy they sand bagged downtown for fear the Willamette River would overflow. It didn’t, but floods certainly happened in outlying areas.

This gets me thinking about Don Brown’s new nonfiction book Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans.

 

This is a stunning graphic chronicle of the tragedy that hit New Orleans in 2005. As with The Great Dust Bowl, the illustrations are powerful and the text combines facts and details that attest to wide research and reading on Brown’s part.

Brown does not shy away from telling the hard parts of this story, in addition to the heroic. Graphic nonfiction makes for an easy way to build students’ background knowledge of events that happened before they were born or before they can remember. This book will be an excellent addition to any classroom library.