2016 releases about 9/11 for kids and teens

This year, the 15th anniversary year of the September 11 attacks, I noticed that a lot of 9/11 books were coming out for young audiences. You may sometimes be surprised to remember, like I am, that many high schoolers and all of those in younger grades were not alive to experience the tragedy firsthand. My daughter is one of those youths and I struggle with finding the right words to someday tell her about what happened and how it forever changed the world. I like to learn about the world around me through reading books, and maybe she will be that way too. Here are some 2016 releases about 9/11 that I would definitely share with her (listed in order of age-appropriateness):

This picture book describes a scene from 9/11 that you don’t hear much about – if at all. I did not realize that nearly 500,000 people evacuated the devastated NYC area by boat. I now know that the boat crews who transported and comforted these evacuees were heroes, like others first responders, because they moved toward the danger to help others instead of turning away. It’s great for children to learn about different parts of the days’ history and this book’s story is not to be missed. Late elementary students will quickly be drawn into Julie Gassman’s descriptions and Steve Moors’ illustrations.

Towers Falling tells of a fifth grader learning about September 11, 2001, in 2016. Unlike most of her peers, Deja doesn’t know anything about what happened on that particular day before she was born. She learns not only about 9/11 and the importance of history, but also about friendship and family. She makes friends with a boy and a girl who are both very different from her. And, at the same time, Deja is a homeless girl who wants desperately to understand her family and her situation. Learning about 9/11 helps her put the pieces of her life together and break out of her comfort zone. These lessons aren’t easy for her to learn and I teared up a few times during her journey, but I really appreciated this story.

This is another book with diverse characters, and it explores the lives of four middle schoolers in the days before, during, and after 9/11. I was also in middle school on that day in 2001, and this story took me right back to that moment and the feelings that followed. Navigating middle school and right versus wrong is tough enough without national catastrophe, but the students in Nine, Ten deal with it in the best way they know how. Nora Raleigh Baskin delivers a slower buildup to a big event that can be another good learning opportunity for young readers.

Gae Polisner offers a YA story that puts readers right into the thick of the action from the very first sentence. Kyle lives in Brooklyn and attends school not far from the site of the World Trade Center. All of the books in this post’s list include settings in the area of Ground Zero, but this one definitely gets closest to the fear and panic and death experienced by New Yorkers on 9/11. The effects of the incident (smoke and debris, transportation difficulty, school closures, and so much more) clearly lasted for more than one terrible day for local residents. Teenager Kyle deals with the aftermath over four days in The Memory of Things while growing up, falling in love, and finding hope in tragedy. It was a truly inventive story that I’m very glad to have read on this 15th anniversary.