Books to Read While Physically Distancing: I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919

Did you know that your Galesburg Public Library card allows you to check out e-books and audio books through the Libby app? All you need is your library card and your PIN (your birth date in MMDDYYYY format) and you'll be on your way to reading on your phone or tablet!  

Books to Read While Physically Distancing (BtRWPD) will focus on books available for checkout through Libby.

I Survived the Great Molasses Flood
by Lauren Tarshis
New York: Scholastic Paperbacks, 2019

Carmen and her father moved from Italy to Boston four years ago. She's doing well in school, her neighbor Tony is her best friend, and she rides a horse named Rosie around the neighborhood. A popular spot with the local kids is a huge metal tank that hold millions of gallons of molasses. It's always leaking, and the kids are able to take samples of the tasty syrup. But the leaking seems to be getting worse. On the afternoon of January 15, 1919, a horrible noise shakes the city. The tank has burst! A wave of molasses 20 feet high is sweeping through the city! Will Carmen and Tony be able to make it to safety?

The I Survived series looks at historical events throughout the millennia, told through the eyes of children. What impressed me was the way the author shows history as a series of interconnected events. Rather than focus on one of the more unusual disasters in history, she places it in the events of the time. Carmen and her father left Italy after the Avezzano earthquake in 1915, and her father dies from the Spanish flu months before the Molasses Flood. The molasses was being used for munitions production for the Great War (World War I). At the end of the book, several other book in the series that take place around the same time are recommended. There is also a follow up section that delves further into the history of the incident, and its lasting effects. The tank burst to shoddy manufacturing and negligence, and the legal and regulatory changes that followed are still around today. I recommend this book for older kids who can deal with secondary character death (Papa) and the main characters being in peril.