Out of the Fires
After a fire destroys his home and neighborhood, a young boy must learn what it means to be resilient and to recover.
Let me tell you about that one day everything was there, and then there was nothing.
This inspiring journal will help victims of a natural disaster as they follow a boy who is healing after a devastating fire in his neighborhood. A journal filled with drawings, news clippings, and coping strategies, this book is chock full of information on cultivating resilience after a natural disaster. Things may never be “normal” again, but he discovers that he is resilient and strong—even when hard things happen. Includes end matter on the topic of building resilience.
Carrie Lara, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who has worked with a range of clients, from children and families to adults with severe mental illness. She is an award-winning children’s book author whose books include Marvelous Maravilloso and The Heart of Mi Familia.
She lives in Sonoma County, CA, with her family, where they have had first-hand experience surviving the natural disaster of wildfires. Visit her on Facebookopens in new window, Instagramopens in new window, or on her websiteopens in new window.
Colleen Larmour is a children’s book illustrator and author living in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She graduated from the Cambridge School of Art masters course in children’s book illustration.
Her published titles include Under the Silvery Moon, Little Friend, Making Friends: A Book About First Friendships and Our Green City.
The aftermath of a natural disaster becomes an educational narrative.
Narrated by a boy coming back to school following a wildfire that canceled classes for two weeks, this book is intended to help young people grappling with similar events. The first section deals with the return to school in paragraphs broken up by related, colored pencil–esque images. The boy learns strategies for dealing with trauma (writing, drawing, taking deep breaths). It’s not until the second section that readers discover exactly what happened, though the author’s introduction details the 2017 California wildfires that inspired the book. This section describes the fire and the boy and his family’s evacuation, giving readers a child’s-eye view that, amid the chaos, grounds itself in people’s kindness. The narrator’s reaction to the fire evolves over time; sometimes he feels angry, other times sad and lost. Moments of frustration are conveyed, too: “My emotions exploded,” he says, alongside an image of a mushroom cloud. However, seeing his friends again makes him feel happy; the child’s emotional journey will reassure both young people and adults. Interspersed news clippings describe what is happening in the community at large, though the narrator mostly focuses on his personal journey. At the end, however, he discusses worldwide disasters, and he and his classmates send encouraging messages to kids in Australia, where wildfires also raged.
—Kirkus Reviews
From the engaging and thoughtful graphics to identifying with our communities children’s, emotions and feelings after witnessing the horrors of watching everything they know go up in flames. The author has truly captured the tapestry of what our children have and are going through and how they process stress and anxiety. The book ends with a focus on empowerment and the resiliency of our community and provides kids with optimism and a holistic outlook on the future!
—Cyndi Foreman, Division Chief/Fire Marshal, Sonoma County Fire District
