A STORM CALLED KATRINA

A heartrending story of a New Orleans family’s experience through Hurricane Katrina.

Ten-year-old Louis Daniel goes to sleep hugging his brass cornet close as the winds of Hurricane Katrina begin to howl and rattle the house. In the morning, the family realizes that the levee has broken, and the water is quickly rising. They begin to make their way through the wreckage to the promised safety of the Superdome, with Louis Daniel and his mother riding on a piece of someone’s porch as his father pulls them along past a plastic Christmas tree, an eager puppy that they cannot rescue and something that is probably a body in the water. The family makes it to the Superdome, but they eventually find themselves separated. Louis Daniel is sure he has to do something to find his father, but what? And what will happen to the family after they leave the Superdome? And to the friendly dog Louis had to leave behind in the rushing waters? Bootman’s gorgeous paintings bring out the resilient character of the city even as he depicts the devastation it suffered. However, it is through the body language and the emotion in the faces of the mostly African-American cast of characters he creates that Bootman most precisely articulates what it was like to live through such a harrowing experience.

Simple, affecting prose and intricate, inspired paintings make this one worth sharing for sure.