By Kirby Larson, Mary Nethery
A true story: New Orleans emptied out ahead of Hurricane Katrina, a dog on a chain and a blind cat were left behind, and the two of them kept each other alive in the wreckage for months.
People leaving New Orleans were told they couldn't take their animals. Bobbi the dog was chained in a yard so she'd stay put until her family came back for her. They never came back. Bobbi broke the chain and headed out into a flooded, smashed-up city dragging four feet of it behind her, and a scruffy cat called Bob Cat went with her. The two of them lived on the streets for months. A construction worker rebuilding the city finally caught them, and at the shelter the volunteers worked out the thing nobody had noticed: Bob Cat was blind. He had never once been able to see Bobbi. He'd followed her all that time by listening to the chain scrape along the ground behind her. Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery saw the pair on the news and went and found out the rest.
I'd reach for this when a child has heard about a disaster on the news and keeps asking what actually happened to everyone. That's a real appetite, and it isn't the same as wanting to be comforted. Some children go quiet after they see a flood or a fire, and for a good number of them the quiet is curiosity — they want to know, and a true answer helps them more than a soothing one does. This gives them one at a size they can hold: two animals, one chain, four months, a happy ending in Oregon. Katrina is far too big to picture. Bobbi isn't. And because it's a picture book, a six-year-old with that question can be handed a real answer without being handed the whole catastrophe.