Out of the Fires - by Carrie Lara (Hardcover)

About the Book

After a fire destroys his home and neighborhood, a young boy must learn what it means to be resilient and to recover.

Book Synopsis

After a fire destroys his home and neighborhood, a young boy must learn what it means to be resilient and to recover.

Let me tell you about that one day everything was there, and then there was nothing.

After a fire destroys his home and neighborhood, a young boy must learn what it means to be resilient and to recover. Things may never be "normal" again, but he discovers that he is strong--even when hard things happen. This inspiring journal is filled with drawings, news clippings, and coping strategies to help children cultivate resilience after a natural disaster. Includes end matter on the topic of building resilience.

Review Quotes

The aftermath of a natural disaster becomes an educational narrative.

Narrated by a boy coming back to school following a wildfire that canceled classes for two weeks, this book is intended to help young people grappling with similar events. The first section deals with the return to school in paragraphs broken up by related, colored pencil-esque images. The boy learns strategies for dealing with trauma (writing, drawing, taking deep breaths). It's not until the second section that readers discover exactly what happened, though the author's introduction details the 2017 California wildfires that inspired the book. This section describes the fire and the boy and his family's evacuation, giving readers a child's-eye view that, amid the chaos, grounds itself in people's kindness. The narrator's reaction to the fire evolves over time; sometimes he feels angry, other times sad and lost. Moments of frustration are conveyed, too: "My emotions exploded," he says, alongside an image of a mushroom cloud. However, seeing his friends again makes him feel happy; the child's emotional journey will reassure both young people and adults. Interspersed news clippings describe what is happening in the community at large, though the narrator mostly focuses on his personal journey. At the end, however, he discusses worldwide disasters, and he and his classmates send encouraging messages to kids in Australia, where wildfires also raged.

About the Author

Carrie Lara, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who has worked with a range of clients, from children and families to adults
with severe mental illness. She is an award-winning children's book author whose books include Marvelous Maravilloso and The Heart of Mi Familia. She lives in Sonoma County, CA with her family, where they have had first hand experience surviving the natural disaster of wildfires. Visit carrielara.com and @AuthorCarrieLara on Facebook and Instagram.

Colleen Larmour is a children's book illustrator and author living in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She graduated from the Cambridge School of Art masters course in children's book illustration. Her published titles include Under the Silvery Moon, Little Friend, Making Friends: A Book About First Friendships and Our Green City.