Ed Butts,
SOS Stories of Survival: True Tales of Disaster, Tragedy and Courage
Tundra Books, 2007

Rating: G*

As I unpacked this book I was a bit discouraged. I have read a few disaster books lately and frankly, how many of these do you really need? Well, you may in fact want this one!

Ed Butts has put together the stories of thirteen disasters occurring between the late 1800s and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Each of these stories begins with a brief paragraph giving an overview of the facts and then proceeds to tell a story focused primarily upon the children and or young adults affected. These stories are very narrative in nature and one cannot help but be drawn into them.

Seventeen year old Christy Ann Morrison was feeling seasick the morning of September 14, 1882 as the passenger steamer Asia pitched and rolled in Georgian Bay. Little did she know she was about to be the only survivor of the doomed ship and that this fame would bring her nothing but regret...

At 4:45 on March 25. 1911, Rose Glantz and her friends were excited as they got ready to leave the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City where they worked a six day week. Employing mainly immigrant women and girls, too desperate for work to complain about dangerous unsanitary conditions, wealthy men like Max Blanck and Isaac Harris would adjust time clocks to cheat their workers and change city fire regulations to suit their own greedy needs. As Rose waited to have her purse searched, the floor below her was already on fire and while she escaped, in the next twenty minutes 146 people would die - sixty three of them teenagers; all but five, girls...

SOS is very readable and appears reliable according to the "Further Reading" and "Photo Credits" sections in the back. Being so narrative however and aimed at young people brings with it a natural bias but depending on your age group and your purpose this might be an advantage. It was very enjoyable and unique to read about historical events as they affected young people and certainly my thirteen year old was fascinated. Not being a big fan of reading, she wasn't put off either by the lack of colour which I think is attributable to the highly interesting content and the often finely tuned sense of justice evident in many young people. Very interesting and a worthwhile resource.

Thematic Links: Disaster; Tragedy; Courage; Social Injustice; Young People

Leslie L. Kennedy
Vol. 12, number 5
October 2007

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.