Amira Webbert

Prof. Scanlan

Natural Disasters

  (1) Reilly, K. M. & Casteel, T. (2012) Natural disasters: investigate Earth’s most destructive forces: with 25 projects. White River Junction, Vermont: Nomad Press.

           (2) Tsunamis have been occurring for centuries, and it either gets worse, or manageable. I say manageable because although a huge wave of water that can kill millions can never be conversant with, people still know what to expect when it happens due to the protocols in their current living area. Earthquakes and tsunamis have many similarities, even though they create their own “natural disaster”, they also work together in a certain way. For example, earthquakes are formed by the shift in tectonic plates within the earths crust, and the bigger the earthquake, the bigger the tsunami will be. Tsunamis major hotspots are the Pacific Ocean near the subduction zones, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Chile, Philippines, Japan, etc. The author Kathleen M. Reilly is a science teacher and also an award winning writer for her many books, while Tom Casteel is an illustrator and cartoonist; Tom also illustrated over two dozen books for Nomad press and graduated from a cartoonist school in 2011. The author’s intended audience is children of a certain age who one likes to look at pictures to have a better understanding and two, children of a certain age who is learning about the topic as well. (3) In my opinion, this story was helpful for it’s age group. The author used more pictures and models for better understanding to her intended audience and stated as much details about the tsunamis, and their hotspots as possible, etcetera. (4) Although, I do not think the author is credible because her writing style was weak, and her purpose was not explicitly established. (5) Therefore, I believe the author chose this genre because it is a simple topic, and easy research. I also feel like the topic is not much of a challenge, anyone can google the hotspots, the reason why it occurs, the amount of damage it causes, and write a story about it as if it were their own idea, their own hard and dedicated work that came up with the conclusions and results to why and how this disaster occurs. (6) One key quote that I find important to this disaster is, “A tsunami can completely devastate an area”. Now you may ask, “what is so interesting about this quote?”, “why would it be labeled as a key quote?”. I label this quote as a key quote because it gives the word tsunami it’s meaning. If no one could ever understand what a tsunami does through all that scientific talk, all they must know is, a tsunami can devastate an area, a tsunami can bring more destruction to earth than anyone can imagine, a tsunami can grow bigger and bigger with or without a warning and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Water is not harmless, and neither is the earth in general.