Hurricane Bob is coming! We have only a few hours to get ready before it hits our coast.
Hurricane Bob is headed for Cape Cod, and Margo races to help her family
prepare for the storm. She fills up the bathtub with water, collects vegetables
from the garden and comforts her dog, Pepper.
The Sky and the sea are the same gray. You can't tell where the water ends in the distance and the sky begins. The wind is so strong I can lean against it without falling down.
Margo describes the suspense of waiting for the hurricane, and tells what it's like when it really hits her house. The world is changed once the hurricane has passed. When electric power is finally restored after five days, Margo discovers that Hurricane Bob has left behind some things that no one had predicted.
Hurricane Bob was an actual Hurricane that hit the coast in August 1991.
An Author's Note at the end of the book tells you all about hurricanes.
Reviews
Inspired by the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Bob in 1991, this picture book uses the first-person narrative of a little girl to chronicle how one family prepared for, experienced, and survived the hurricane on Cape Cod. Demas mixes details about preparation (bringing in the wash, filling containers and the bathtub with water) with particulars more specific to life on the Cape, such as bringing in the sailboats. The writing is strong on description... .Cozy pictures of the family piecing together a puzzle in the midst of the hurricane contrast starkly with sky-and seascapes that convey the awful gathering and angry tumult of the storm. One especially telling detail is the girl's swing seat, which sails high into the air without her. A note at the end provides some fascinating information on what constitutes hurricanes, how they're named, and what warning signs to heed
--Booklist
"...Mild and reassuring, this picture book may help alleviate a youngster's fear of storms."
-- School Library Journal
Behind the Scenes
Hurricane! is fiction, but it's based on my family's real experience when Hurricane Bob
hit Cape Cod. Our dog was just as nervous as Pepper, and we did work on a giant
jig-saw puzzle. After Hurricane Bob had passed, I saw a rabbit, like the one
in the story, munching on leaves from a fallen tree. Just like Margo in the
story, we didn't have power or running water for almost a week. (You can imagine
what happened to the food in the refrigerator!)
Lenice Strohmeier, the illustrator of Hurricane! used a friend, Sarah, and her dog, Max, as models for Margo and Pepper. Max was a standard poodle, and by coincidence my first published book, That Dog Melly! is about a standard poodle, too. (Check out her picture on the cover of that book.) Lenice used her son and daughter as models for Margo's parents in the story, but she had to make them look much older than they were in real life.
In the News
“Sojourns, wild water & spunky females: Cape Cod is setting for new books by Corinne Demas” by Bonnie Wells, Amherst Bulletin, June 2, 2000.
How to Get this Book
Ask for it at your local library.
Buy it at your local bookstore.
Order it online:
Illustrator
Lenice Strohmeier started painting the sea during a summer in Maine when she was eight. "I got more paint on the rocks than on the canvas," she tells me. Now she lives with her family in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, a few minutes from the beach. She is a member of the New England Watercolor Society, and her work has been exhibited in national shows. Her two Siamese cats, Mingo and Dragon, help out in her studio.
Hurricane! is her first picture book.