Book Description
for The 9 by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
In the summer of 2004, the “Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” was presented to the American Public. The following December, a report card was issued indicating a large lack of preparedness and leadership prior to the 9/11 attacks. Full of complicated data and detailed analysis, this document was supposed to explain what happened on September 11 and offer insight on preventing future attacks. Jacobson and Colon partnered to create a “graphic adaptation” of the report. Their comic-book version comes complete with data, timelines, and realistic drawings of familiar people, including General Tommy Franks, Osama Bin Laden, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The adaptation is a highly effective way to make the often inscrutable report understandable by more people. Particularly effective is the way it uses visuals to convey time. For example, each of the flights’ timelines appear on the same page to allow readers to have a better sense of the speed of the attacks, an achievement straight text does not allow. Additionally, familiar objects such as maps and flags are used as shorthand, permitting readers to focus on less familiar words and situations in a book that provides interested teens an opportunity to understand the background behind the devastation of September 11, 2001. (Age 12 and older)
CCBC Choices 2007 . © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2007. Used with permission.