I appreciate Don Brown's ability to get to the heart of a tragedy through short bites of information and emotive graphics. His book, Drowned City, about Hurricane Katrina, is a favorite in my classroom, and I'm certain that In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers will be appreciated as well.

9/11... A day that rocked the world. In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers offers different perspectives and events that occurred as a result of the attack on the twin towers.

For now, and the future, this text will be so valuable to our younger generations to recall and remember these shocking events. The graphics ensure that the text is accessible for all.

Most of my students don't remember the events of 9/11, which makes me feel incredibly old, as that's the most pivotal historical event of my life so far. This was such a great series of snapshots of one of the worst days of my life. I hope teens will pick this up and be able to relate for even a second to the pain, confusion, and doubt we all felt that day. The art is gorgeously sparse and the lack of color honestly touched my heart. For a day that started so gorgeous and sunny, it will always be associated with clouds and grey and dust. And death.

WIth this work, Don Brown has written another award winning graphic novel. Similar to his work "Drowned City," "In the Shadow of the Towers" tells of an American disaster using empathy while reporting facts. The author doesn't flinch telling the tale of how America faced a disaster on the level of Pearl Harbor that day. Even as someone who was an adult and experienced the tragedy as it unfolded on live TV, I learned so much about recovery efforts (did you know about the bathtub that kept the towers out of the river?) and heroism of ordinary people that were able to get to "the pile" and rescue trapped victims. I can't wait to watch the medals stack up for this book and introduce it to students in my library once it is published.

#InTheShadowOfTheFallenTowers is a good graphic novel choice for younger people who are not familiar with the events on--as the book says--"the minutes, seconds, hours," etc. of 9/11. The book is clearly well researched moving between specific details and events to larger, more general explanations. Even being as familiar with 9/11 and its aftermath as I am, I learned something new while reading it. All of that being said, I found the "journalistic" or "neutral" tone to be unsettling in some panels. Explanations of "enhanced interrogation" (torture) and the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US are politically murky areas. And while the afterword does a valid job of trying to present that, the panels themselves do not. So I found myself more and more moving away from the information and emotional draw of the story itself. Thank you to the publishers and #NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Don Brown is one of my favorite graphic non-fiction writers for his ability to take on tough events in history (Hurricane Katrina, the Syrian Refugee Crisis) and focus on details that help the event to be better understood. In this one, he’s portraying the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Full disclosure, I was in New York City on that day and lived there as events unfolded. My saddest memories are around the missing flyers posted everywhere in the city.

He also focuses on the careful and painstaking removal and searching of the debris for human remains as well as the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan by Special Forces. The gray and brown palette provide the right tone for the work.

In true Don Brown style, this graphic novel chronicles the aftermath of September 11 events on a broad scale while humanizing the story by focusing on individual people’s struggles and triumphs. The illustrations add to the desperation one feels while reading the narrative and the whole package could bring you to tears. It has wonderful end notes and supporting citations back up the balanced account.