Flood

Jackie French (author)

Bruce Whatley (illustrator)

Scholastic Press, Australia: August 2011

ISBN: 9781742830728

Genres: picture book, realistic fiction

Issues: environment, community

The rain keeps falling and children can't play outside; the ground becomes saturated; the rivers rise: flood is imminent. In stark, concise prose, Jackie French captures the terrifying and devastating enormity of the 2011 Queensland floods. 'Trees and sofas sucked and swirled into the torrent. Boats tore from their jetties. A cafe, wrenched from its foundations, was captured in the river's surge.' A surge so unstoppable that inside and outside become one and humans cling to wreckage.

But Flood also celebrates the response of communities to this disaster – first locally, then statewide and finally across the nation as Australians expressed their compassion and solidarity in the only way they could: not by stopping the water but by offering shelter, food, comfort, aid and finally help to clean up.

Bruce Whatley is probably best known for his comical and endearing illustrations in Diary of a Wombat but here the reader sees a greater depth and emotion, as is appropriate for such a traumatic event. Whatley has allowed his watercolour to drip and dribble down the page, evoking not only the heavy rains and water-soaked landscape and people but the tears of loss and grief. Colours are muted, for the most part, echoing the soil-laden water that invaded the landscape and every building on it. After the cleanup clearer pastels hint at a more optimistic future but there is no neat conclusion, only a recognition that recovery has only just begun. Be sure to read Whatley's own comments about his illustration style and how he achieved it as this may inspire you in your own work.

Text and illustration work together inseparably, making this a powerful, evocative picture book that will remind our society of a tragedy that is forgotten all too quickly amidst the noise and chaos of world events. Flood also reminds us of the best that humans can be, when they put aside petty issues in the face of a great challenge.

Every school should have a copy.