By Lauren Tarshis
Eleven-year-old Barry is in the Lower Ninth Ward when the levees break, and the flood takes him off the roof and away from his family.
Barry Tucker is eleven and lives in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and he draws superheroes. His family packs the car to get out ahead of the storm, sits in the traffic, and then turns back, because his little sister Cleo is sick and can't do it. So they're home when Katrina arrives. The water comes up into the house and they go to the attic and then out onto the roof, and then a gust knocks Barry off it and the flood carries him away on his own. What follows is a boy in the water in the dark: hanging onto a tree, climbing into somebody's house that's floating past, rescuing a dog called Cruz who he's frightened of, getting knocked back into the water when a helicopter comes over, riding on the roof of a car until a woman with a boat picks him up. Then he has to find his family. Sixteen short chapters and most of them end badly on purpose.
Some children hear about a disaster and want to be inside it, not reassured about it. This book lets them walk through Katrina next to a boy their own age and come out the other side. Barry is eleven and frightened and he keeps going. By the end your child knows what a levee is, what happened in the Lower Ninth Ward, and why so many people didn't just leave. Tarshis writes short and fast and hangs a hook off the end of nearly every chapter, so it's a book a child who doesn't read will actually finish. And there are a dozen more in the series, so if this one grabs them, the next disaster is already waiting.