Jewell Parker Rhodes

From award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes, a powerful novel set fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks. When her fifth-grade teacher hints that a series of lessons about home and community will culminate with one big answer about two tall towers once visible outside their classroom window, Deja can't help but feel confused. She sets off on a journey of discovery, with new friends Ben and Sabeen by her side. But just as she gets closer to answering big questions about who she is, what America means, and how communities can grow (and heal), she uncovers new questions, too. Like, why does Pop get so angry when she brings up anything about the towers? Award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes tells a powerful story about young people who weren't alive to witness this defining moment in history, but begin to realize how much it colors their every day.

Towers Falling

Sarah Sammis

Normally these types of books make me cringe because the author fails to see things from their audience's point of view. This is especially true with recent history (whether nonfiction or fiction) written for children. What's recent for one generation is across the huge chasm of "before" for the generations that come after.

Here's a rare book that gets the target audience and gets their parents' generation. And also gets New York. My grandmother was of the mindset of the adults in the book that you don't talk about the THING (whatever it might be) that was a terrible event, a scandalous book or film, a terrible person — etc. 

All of that is in this book along with believable characters who are living in their piece of fictional but very realistic New York.

http://pussreboots.pair.com/blog/2017...

H. Kamran

Meet Deja Barnes, who is going to a new school. She meets Ben and Sabeen, who become her new best friends. She sets out on a journey to uncover what happened on September 11, 2001. She skips school, heading to 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. An assignment from her history teacher helps her on her quest. An assignment from her English teacher helps her out as well. What will Deja uncover?

Caroline Lewicki

This book is so important. There is a generation of kids coming into school and learning about 9/11 for the first time. They may or may not know how this history relates to them. Deja learns the importance of history to the world but also to her family. She learns about 9/11 for the first time and comes to understand that history is always a part of who we are as a country and as people. I loved this book and the message it sends. I think this would be a great assigned reading for kids who are learning all the dynamics of 9/11 and the way it has shaped our world today.

Jeni Enjaian

This felt far too simplistic. I have read a handful of books that use 9/11 as a jumping off point, either telling the story from the point of view of someone connected to the towers and the event directly or using the events as a longer, more distance connection or perhaps as a historical event and all of them handle the situation much better than Rhodes does in this book.
I know that Rhodes attempts to tell the story through the eyes of a 10 year old, Deja, and her experience of learning about this in her new school as part of a STEAM unit. (Deja never uses that word of course, but as an educator who just finished a similar unit, I saw all the signs.)
Things, these big, heavy, consequential things, were dealt with far too easily. Yes, a ten year old will make a different meaning than her adult father but sometimes when an adult writes as a child, they simplify too much.

Towers Falling

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