After the Crisis: Using Storybooks to Help Children Cope »

Cathy Grace has served as the early childhood coordinator at the Mississippi Department of Education and assisted school districts in the implementation of public kindergarten throughout the state. Working with the Department of Human Services, Cathy coordinated the development of a family support/family preservation program that is now a statewide model. She lives in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elizabeth F. Shores, M.A.P.H., is the associate director for research, communications, and national initiatives of the Early Childhood Institute at Mississippi State University. She has published articles on the early history of developmental disabilities services in Arkansas, mongraphs on K-12 reform and child welfare reform in Arkansas, and social studies curricula. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

A guide for teachers on using storybooks to help children cope in the aftermath of crisis.

School Library Journal

Grace and Shores have compiled a list of more than 50 picture books that promote emotional resilience and help children cope with natural disasters. Many of the books have recent publication dates, but a few were published 10 or 20 years ago, which leads one to question how the list was compiled. Other than stating that one of their criteria was the presence of the books in numerous public libraries, the authors do not indicate how the books were originally evaluated. For each book, the authors list the related disasters (earthquake, volcano eruption, fire, flood, etc.), a short description of the book's content, and activities that are appropriate for specified age groups. The activities are extremely similar throughout, ranging from acting out the story, answering questions about it, to doing simple art projects. With a little help from either a language-arts expert or art educator, a much broader range of activities could have been explored. Librarians may want to keep this book as a reference; a creative teacher can certainly take the information here and supplement the activities in an imaginative way.—Wendy Smith-D'Arezzo, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD