My Never Ending List

What amazed me most about this graphic novel was how well it depicts the devastation that Hurricane Katina caused in New Orleans and in the surrounding communities. The intensity, distress and ugliness that surrounded this event were felt throughout the illustrations and in the text. As this storm gathers steam in Africa in the beginning pages and it makes its way across the Atlantic waters, I could see the swirling black mass approaching the coastline, getting darker and gathering strength, as individuals are being warned to leave. Some residents have decided to stay, their reasons being personal or transportation has become an issue for them. There seems to be lack of communication between the residents and the individuals in charge and I found throughout this novel, there are many instances of this, where people are not communicating with one another and this lack of communication causes major issues in this disaster. Free city buses were supposedly offered to help individuals evacuate but it seems that these buses never showed up.   Later, rescue efforts to retrieve individuals trapped by flood waters had them choosing whether they wanted to be rescued or stay where they were with their pets. For some individuals their pet(s) are their lives and they choose to stay with their pet(s) putting their lives in danger.   Its instances like this that made me realize the magnitude of this event. Don’t get me started on the Superdome, but I was glad that Don covers it in great deal in this graphic novel.

Individuals were acting alone and this novel shows the isolation that many in the community felt and what it finally takes for the issues to get resolved.   This is not a novel that you can read quickly, it is an emotional one. The text gives us the figures and the facts but it’s the illustrations that hit us the hardest.   They show us what it was like to be on the scene, be among the confusion and destruction, it was the scenes that take place both above water and underwater that I truly adored them.   It’s a powerful story, of human suffering, of individuals coming together, of a nation that made mistakes and hopefully learned from them and of hero’s that live in our own backyard. I remember being glued to my television when this was all unfolding, I couldn’t believe that this was happening and my heart broke for these people and reading this graphic novel, brought it all back to me. I can’t say enough about what a great job Don Brown did with this novel.