by Moe Zilla

Created on: September 23, 2010

It's a story about a family that lives in a trailer by the racetrack.  ("Dad was a jockey…" explains the little boy narrating. "I played baseball in the field across from the barns.") One day there's a sudden tornado, and "The world went dark… In the roar I could hear metal being torn apart."  And when the storm lifts, the family can't find their baby's crib.

The story was written by George Ella Lyon, who's also published collections of her poetry. She applies the same care to her straightforward narration, choosing simple but evocative words. "Parts of our trailer made a line across the field," she writes, "like a road of crumpled tinfoil." The family searches for the missing child, but find pieces of empty wreckage instead.

Irene Trivas drew the book's pastel illustrations, and she captures the dark menace of the tornado. As the grey cloud arrives, it's tinted with an angry purple, and on the next page it's an enormous black funnel curving towards the houses. The sky was a bright white and yellow, but it's smudged with black, and in the next picture, blackness nearly fills the entire background. There's a jumble with stabs of light color - glaring white sheets of jagged metal and a couple streaks of orange. Hurtling by at the top of the frame, there's even a red pickup truck.

I think this book could be educational, since it creates empathy for tornado victims. I imagine this book might be especially popular in "Tornado Alley," helping children to work through their feelings and to understand what's going on. The plot might be a little disturbing, but that that can also be cathartic for young children. The tragedy strikes, but the family works through it, and they come out the other side.

The boy was always proud of his baseball-playing skills, and his father calls him Hawkeye. And eventually he's the one who spots the crib, resting peacefully in a field over a fence. In fact, the little baby is asleep, and yawns and stretches innocently. She had "just slept through the wildest ride of her life," the narrator jokes. And soon all of the neighbors gather around.

The story highlights the real danger of tornados - but it also puts things into perspective. All that's really important is that the family is safe, and the mother and father both cry happy tears. "But where are we going to live?" the little boy asks his parents, as he looks at the wreckage around them.

"Together," his father replies, as he puts his arms around his family.

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