I Survived The Great Molasses Flood, 1919 Review

This book or I should this series is one of my favorite middle grade books. 

Lauren does a great job telling history in a fun and relatable way for children to enjoy and understand. She does lot of research for these books. At the end of the story she explains what research she did and how she decides to write the story. She gets a lot of suggestion from her fans and what they would like her next book to be. Most of the stories she writes I know something about it but there have been a few that I didn't. This is one of the things I didn't know anything about. 

Now for my review of this book. This book is set in Boston, Ma in the Winter time.

Carmen and her father immigrated to the Us from Italy shortly after her mother passed away. Her father wanted her to have a better chance in life. Their village in Italy wasn't allowing girls to go school because of the Earthquake that took her Mother. Carmen wasn't impressed with the Us but soon came to love it. She is able to go to school and she has a few friends. Her best friend is Tony. n the middle of Boston at the North end is a big tower full of Molasses that is being stored for the making of bombs. Molasses isn't just for flavoring anymore. The tower is only suppose to hold up to 2 million gallons of Molasses but they keep adding more. The Tank is leaking and making funny noises. The kids in the area like to go to the tank and lick the leaking molasses ii is like ice cream to them. Carmen doesn't like the taste of molasses she thinks it has a bitter flavor. The company who built the tank doesn't think there is an issue with the tank and they have a guard around it to keep the children away. The guard isn't there all the time so he doesn't think anything is wrong with tank.

The book talks about the things and going on in Boston around this period of time, like the flu epidemic of 1918 which really didn't hit Boston until this time which is early 1919. And how the design of the tank was done quickly and lazily to get it ready to hold the molasses.

The day of the flood was January 15, 1919 so just over 100 years ago. It tells how it happen and how many lives were taken and how it destroyed the city. The company tried to blame others by saying that someone put a bomb into the tank. This is all common knowledge if you review newspaper from that time. It is hard to review because the characters are made up so the story is also made up but the events are real but you feel for them just the same. I highly recommend that you read this book and learn more about this disaster. I find that reading middle grade historical fiction or even non-fiction is more fun and less dry than adult books. I will continue to read these books by Lauren because she makes them easy to read and fun and the same time.