When Disaster Strikes: Children’s Books About Floods & Hurricanes

This gorgeous, award-winning picture book also takes place in Puerto Rico, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Both hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. Elena loves the mango tree in her family’s garden and the sound the coquí frogs make at night. After the hurricane, the coquí frogs go silent. The hurricane has left so much destruction, and Elena and her family and community begin the slow work of recovery and repair. As they do so, the mango tree and neighbor gardens help sustain them. Eventually, the coquí frog song can be heard once more. This one definitely had me tearing up a bit.

This is a beautifully illustrated picture book about a young boy experiencing a hurricane. The narrator loves a bedraggled dock at the edge of town. He fishes there, swims, and plays at the dock. One day, the air feels different, and a hurricane arrives. Everyone huddles in their homes, and when it’s over, the town has a lot of damage. The dock has mostly washed away. The boy wants to rebuild it, but everyone is too busy repairing their homes. He begins to do it by himself, but as he works, more and more people are able to help, until the dock is even better than it was before. This is part of a picture book series about natural disasters.

This is a lovely realistic middle grade novel about a young girl whose home is destroyed in a flood. Temple is a pretty normal twelve-year-old. She worries about her popularity at school, has a good friend group, and is tired of babysitting her younger sister. Then storms hit and a dam becomes overwhelmed by the sudden influx of rainwater and breaks. Temple’s home is destroyed, and the family is forced to move to a different town. Temple now attends an all-new school, where she knows absolutely no one, while her parents try to figure out how they can afford to rebuild. Temple decides to host a fundraiser to raise money for flood victims, but that’s harder than she thought.

This is the first book in the The Louisiana Girls trilogy, a historical fiction middle grade series about Black girls experiencing crises. This wonderful first book takes place during Hurricane Katrina. Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives with Mama Ya-Ya, who delivered her and adopted her after her birth mother’s death. Mama Ya-Ya experiences a premonition about Hurricane Katrina just days before it hits. Can she help Mama Ya-Ya and her community survive the hurricane and its aftermath?