Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown

Title: Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans

Author: Written and Illustrated by Don Brown

Pages: 93

Finished: 3/13/17

First Sentence: A swirl of unremarkable wind leaves Africa and breezes toward the Americas.

Summary: (From Goodreads) On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina's monstrous winds and surging water overwhelmed the protective levees around low-lying New Orleans, Louisiana. Eighty percent of the city flooded, in some places under twenty feet of water. Property damages across the Gulf Coast topped $100 billion. One thousand eight hundred and thirty-three people lost their lives. The tale of this historic storm and the drowning of an American city is one of selflessness, heroism, and courage—and also of incompetence, racism, and criminality.

Thoughts: I was just starting my senior year of high school when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. I don't remember much about it other than hearing that the city wasn't prepared, that the response to the disaster was awful, and that our leadership really screwed up. I remember a West Wing episode that everyone said was made to show how President George W. Bush should have responded to Katrina. But I couldn't tell you much of what had happened.

This book really brought home just how horrible the disaster was. And somehow, the added illustrations in the graphic novel made it even more tragic. The first body in a panel made me tear up. And then others came. The description of conditions at the superdome was hard to stomach. The added illustrations just hurt. Reading this reminded me of a quote from Dr. Julian Bashir on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when he said, "Causing people to suffer because you hate them... is terrible. But causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care... that's really hard to understand." 

That's pretty much the way I felt through this whole book. I just couldn't understand how this could have happened. 

Excellent book, for 5th through 8th grade, though be ready to help your child digest the human suffering.