Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere by Julie T. LamanaMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hurricane Katrina was a major natural disaster in U.S.A history, and yet this is the first book I’ve read that mentions it at all. While it was sad in parts, I think that it is good for kids to have some understanding about what happened.
Because this book is set during a historical event, it made reading it a little different than a normal fiction book. The characters may have been fiction, but the hurricane was not. That means that when Armani throws a fit about her birthday, I just wanted to shake her because I knew that having friends come over that day was so inconsequential that she was just annoying. The longer the Curtis family stayed in their home while the hurricane came toward them, the more I screamed in my head for them to get out. In a normal book, I wouldn’t have any idea of what was coming or how bad it would be, so I could deal with the characters going about their everyday lives.
This is one of those books that is really hard to review without giving some spoilers. I’m just going to say that it is very emotional and the reader becomes invested in the characters and the question of what the new normal will be once everything is said and done.
Author: Julie T. Lamana
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Publication Date: April 8th 2014
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