Written and Illustrated by Don Brown
Book Source: Purchased
Book Status: Available
I have had this book since last spring or so, but wasn’t ready review it until now. It is a graphic novel about the 1918 flu epidemic. It honestly feels like reading about right now. The ways people responded and didn’t. What did and didn’t. What they knew and didn’t know. Pretty much feels like now. It is actually kind of frustrating to read this and realize how much we should have learned from 1918. There are so many parallels.
For kids trying to process now, this could be a starting point. It is historical but they will see the parallels. It isn’t a scary graphic novel but educational. It is honest and doesn’t shy away from the hard topics. It isn’t sugar coated. It does end a little abruptly. I would have liked to know more about the years immediately following and how they recovered. I know they were censoring and war focused, but why didn’t we learn from this? Why didn’t someone correct the misname of “Spanish Flu” when it was really a “US Flu”?
I think talking about a pandemic like this is needed for kids. Our lives are upside down. We don’t understand what is going on. We don’t have the coping mechanism and sorry, we are not unbreakable. This year is a major marker in our lives. It is changing our futures every day.