By: Priscilla Yu,
on 12/31/2015
Just before noon on 25 April 2015, a violent 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal, killing almost 9,000 people and injuring more than 23,000. Hundreds of aftershocks followed. Entire villages were razed, destroying communities and leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
The post Traveling to provide humanitarian aid: lessons from Nepal appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Clare Hanson,
on 8/12/2015
In the face of severe disasters, or ‘Acts of God’, society turns to reinsurance. It is a financial market that insures insurance firms, and thus trades in large-scale disasters. Reinsurance is therefore the backbone for economic and social recovery in times of unimaginable losses, such as Hurricane Katrina or the attack on the World Trade Centre, through enabling insurers to pay their claims.
The post Eroding norms in reinsurance trading: Can it cause industry collapse? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 6/26/2015
If you like your prophecies pin sharp then look away now. The 16th century celebrity seer Nostradamus excelled at the exact opposite, couching his predictions in terms so vague as to be largely meaningless. This has not, however, prevented his soothsayings attracting enormous and unending interest, and his book – Les Propheties – has rarely been out of print since it was first published 460 years ago. Uniquely, for a renaissance augur, the writings of Nostradamus are perhaps as popular today as they were four and a half centuries ago.
The post Look away now: The prophecies of Nostradamus appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Jen Robinson,
on 4/28/2014
Book: Torn Away
Author: Jennifer Brown
Pages: 288
Age Range: 12 and up
Jersey is likable without being perfect (a bit pudgier than she might like, and one who prefers to stay behind the scenes, rather than be in the limelight). Prior to the tornado, she is frequently irritated by her irrepressible five year old half sister, Marin. She eventually comes to regret not being nicer to Marin when she had the chance. I personally found this point to be hammered at a tiny heavily. But it did make me resolve to be more patient with the irrepressible preschooler living in my own house. And I respected the author's decision not to sugar-coat Jersey's relationship with her sister. Teens are not always kind to their much-younger siblings - this is a fact of life. Other characters, even those that don't survive, are allowed not to be perfect, which is a big part of what makes the book work.
Jersey's experience after the tornado, when she is sent to live with her estranged father and his heinous family, is in some ways worse than the tornado itself. Brown's tone is somewhat matter of fact, rather than overly melodramatic, which helps to keep Torn Away from being too sad to bear. Here are a couple of snippets:
"Had I not know I was standing in my living room, I never would have guessed this was my house. The roof was completely missing. The whole thing. No holes or tears--gone. Some of the outside walls were also missing, and the remaining walls were in perilously bad conditions. One was leaning outward, the window blown and the frame hanging by a corner. Farther away, where the living room and the kitchen normally, met, the house just... ended." (Chapter Four, ARC).
"What the news crews couldn't show was the real damage Elizabeth's monster tornado had left behind. How do you record the wreckage left in someone's heart? I pulled out a piece of gum and popped it into my mouth, then smoothed out the foil. I found a pen on the nightstand and drew a picture of a big stick figure holding a little stick figure." (Chapter Eleven, ARC)
When I was a teenager, I would have adored this book. A natural disaster! A compelling plot full of terrible things happening to someone delightfully ordinary. Complex family relationships. Torn Away has a lot going for it. As an adult reader I enjoyed it, despite feeling the tiniest bit emotionally manipulated. My inkling to read Hate List has increased, in any case.
Torn Away is a book that I think will reach teen readers, and give them (at least for a little while) a new appreciation of their families. And perhaps they'll feel a bit more empathy towards the victims of natural disasters seen on the evening news.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (@LBKids)
Publication Date: May 6, 2014
Source of Book: Advance review copy from the publisher
FTC Required Disclosure:
This site is an Amazon affiliate, and purchases made through Amazon links (including linked book covers) may result in my receiving a small commission (at no additional cost to you).
© 2014 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
By: Jen Robinson,
on 1/7/2014
Book: The Living
Author: Matt De La Peña
Pages: 320
Age Range: 12 and up
The Living is told from the limited third person perspective of Shy, a half Mexican teen from a small California town near the border of Mexico. Shy is spending the summer before his senior year working on a luxury cruise ship (setting out deck chairs, handing out towels, etc.). Shy is in mourning for his Grandma, who died recently and suddenly from an illness called Romero's Disease. He is also reeling from his unsuccessful attempt to stop a passenger from committing suicide, an incident related in the prologue.
As his next 8-day voyage begins, Shy learns that a mysterious man in a black suit is asking questions about him. He also gets worrying news from his family at home. And he's confused by his interactions with beautiful and slightly older fellow staff member Carmen, who has a finace. All of these concerns fade into the background, however, in the face of a natural disaster that leaves Shy fighting for his life.
Shy is a solid character. He lives with his mother, older sister, and nephew (Grandma lived with them, too). The family members are close, but struggle financially. Shy is good-looking and plays for his high school basketball team, and he's not inexperienced with girls, but Carmen knocks him off balance. On the cruise ship he encounters racism and rudeness from the wealthy passengers, and starts to develop an understanding of the socioeconomic chasm in front of him. But this is all reasonably understated - he's also a teen boy who likes girls, worries about his family, and tries to do the right thing.
There is some kissing/making out in The Living, though no on-screen sex. There is also quite a lot of death, and some gore. But no more so than in many apocalyptic type novels (and less gore than some). I wouldn't hesitate to give this to anyone who was able to handle The Hunger Games series.
De La Peña's plotting is tight and fast-paced. Short chapters help keep readers turning the pages, and make The Living a good choice for reluctant readers. The action really flows starting mid-way through the book, and then rarely lets up. The Living is not a book to start when you only have a few minutes to read. This is a book to save for when you have a free afternoon, and can devour the whole thing.
Here's a snippet to give you a feel for De La Peña's writing:
"In the morning the sea had been perfectly calm and beautiful, like a postcard. Now it was a thousand hostile waves crested in white foam and crashing into one another. The massive ship moaned as it pitched and surged under Shy's shell tops--the bow bucking slowly into the air and then falling, bucking and then falling. Thick black clouds hung so low in the sky it felt like the ship was traveling through a rain tunnel." (Page 88)
There is definitely a cinematic flavor to The Living, helped out by the deluxe cruise ship setting, and the acknowledged fact that the young crew members are chosen for their good looks (this point felt a bit overdone for me, but it is true to the survival story genre). The Living would make a great movie, though I think it would be expensive to film due to required special effects. It ends with many threads left dangling, and I am eager for the next book, The Hunted, due out in fall of 2014. Highly recommended for teens and adults.
Publisher: Delacorte Press (@RandomHouseKids)
Publication Date: November 12, 2013
Source of Book: Review copy from the publisher
FTC Required Disclosure:
This site is an Amazon affiliate, and purchases made through Amazon links (including linked book covers) may result in my receiving a small commission (at no additional cost to you).
© 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
Muza Ulasowski, my wonderful collaborator, has created a fabulous FB page for our picture book, “The Sea Cat Dreams”! Muza’s wonderfully life like illustrations have perfectly captured the story in a way I could never have envisaged! She has truly captured the story’s essence! Here are some samples:
The story is about coping with life impacting change something that can happen planned [as in a house move] or completely unplanned [as with a natural disaster, accident, death etc]. Coping with change, as child/family psychologists and counselors all say, is something that has a profound impact, especially on the young. As with grief, adults are often too preoccupied with the change and its ramifications to be able to take in how the children, who are being impacted by change, are managing or not managing in the new setting/situation.
The cat in the story moves, accidently, from one environment & family on a farm, to another very different one, aboard a fishing boat. He is then impacted further by the loss of a master he has come to love. But this is not the end. He moves through his life’s dramatic changes; firstly, by grieving, something we need to encourage each other and especially children, to do. He then reaches out to, shares with and cares for others also affected by loss, in this case, the fisherman’s widow. He gradually accepts his new life situation, not for a moment forgetting what has happened, but treasuring the wonderful memories he has.
The process of grieving must be acknowledged and the grieving child/adult be allowed to express their grief or sense of loss at the change in their lives and encouraged to do so. Let them talk, let them share as much as they need to. Highlight the constructive aspects, positive elements, e.g, wonderful memories of a dead friend, relative or pet. If the impacting change has involved a move – be it to a different school, to another suburb, another state, another country – encourage the keeping of contacts where possible, assist with the making of new contacts and the sharing of the process of moving and resettling, especially any humorous incidents.
The hope in writing this book, was to help children talk about their own stories of life changing events and to recognise, that whilst change is not always pleasant, we can become stronger for it and be better able to reach out and empathise with others experiencing its many faceted impact on their own lives.
See it here: http://utales.com/books/the-sea-cat-dreams
By: Rebecca,
on 5/4/2010
Mark Carey is an assistant professor of environmental history at Washington and Lee University and is the author of In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. The book illustrates in vivid detail how people in the Andes have grappled with the effects of climate change and ensuing natural disasters for more than half a century. In the original post below Carey looks how a recent natural disaster can teach us a climate lesson.
Although some US senators may resist discussion of the new climate and energy bill this week, people around the world continue to live with incessant dangers that disrupt their daily lives and threaten their existence. A recent glacier avalanche in Peru, for example, unleashed a powerful outburst flood that caused significant destruction. It was the same kind of flood that increasingly endangers people living near melting glaciers worldwide, from Switzerland and Norway to Canada and New Zealand, China and Nepal.
Beyond underscoring the need to move forward quickly with a new climate bill, the recent outburst flood also reveals that climate change discussions too often focus solely on the causes of climate change. While critical, this emphasis on what drives climate change and who (or what) is to blame, can derail dialogue about climate impacts that are already occurring worldwide, sometimes with deadly consequences.
The April 11th flood from Peru’s Lake 513 on the slope of Mount Hualcán inundated areas near the town of Carhuaz, destroying dozens of homes and washing away roads. Tens of thousands of residents also lost access to potable water when floodwaters damaged a water treatment facility. Nonetheless, the flood could have been much worse. Luckily, engineers had already partially drained Lake 513 — along with dozens of other glacial lakes in the region.
For seven decades, Peruvian engineers have worked to contain the danger posed by glacial lakes. Nearly 6,000 residents have died from glacial lake outburst floods since 1941, propelling the Peruvian government to drain or dam a total of 34 glacial lakes. Their expertise is now crucial in helping specialists in Asia, North America, and Europe to minimize glacial lake hazards.
The recent flood reveals the promise, as well as the pitfalls, of the Peruvians’ technological fixes. Lake 513 was purportedly one of the glacial lakes that engineers had in fact “fixed.” It originally formed at the foot of a shrinking glacier in the early 1980s, and by 1985 was a significant threat to thousands of Carhuaz residents. Although engineers responded by pumping out millions of gallons of water, the lake kept growing. Finally, in 1991 the dam burst and caused an outburst flood — just as it did earlier this month. Engineers then installed a complex tunnel system to drain even more water out of the lake. Their damage control worked . . . until two weeks ago.
Peru’s experience reminds us that disaster vulnerability is not just about environmental processes. Avalanches and floods only become disasters when they affect people.
In Carhuaz in the 1970s, residents defied zoning laws that prohibited construction in potential avalanche and flood paths below Mount Hualcán. The laws came into being after glacial avalanches on neighboring Mount Huascarán killed 4,000 people in 1962 and 15,000 in 1970. At that point government officials and UNESCO experts determined that Mount Hualcán glaciers were also unstable, and insisted that the population relocate outside the floodplain. Nonetheless, locals resisted, perceiving this as yet another bureaucratic imposition. They also believed that government engineering projects (technology) could p
By: Kirsty,
on 10/8/2009
In his latest book, Megadisasters: Predicting the Next Catastrophe, Florin Diacu looks at a variety of natural disasters, describing how scientists and mathematicians have struggled to understand and predict them over the centuries. In the excerpt below, Diacu tells the story of Tilly Smith, a young English girl whose vigilance saved around 100 lives in the catastrophic tsunami in 2004.
On the morning of 26 December 2004, Tilly Smith was with her parents and younger sister on the Mai Khao beach in Phuket. Ten years old, blond hair falling on her shoulders, Tilly looked jolly and fresh as she smiled in the sun. She had good reasons to be happy, thinking of the damp, cold England she had left behind. As mother and daughter went down to the water, Tilly noticed that the sea looked bubbly and frothy like on the top of a beer. This image triggered some recent memories in her mind. Two weeks earlier, during her geography class at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey, Tilly saw a movie about the Hawaii tsunami of 1946. She recognized the same warning signs: just minutes before the deadly wave hit, the water had begun to form bubbles and turn foamy, so very much as it did now.
‘A tsunami is coming!’ Tilly shouted. ‘We must run away!’
Her mother, Penny, had noticed that strange phenomenon too, but thought it was due to a bad day at sea, so she didn’t take Tilly seriously.
‘Mummy, we must get off the beach now!’ Tilly insisted.
Penny began to worry about her daughter, who started shouting madly at her, frustrated that her mother was blind to the danger. But in spite of her anxiety and irritation, Tilly didn’t give up. She had to convince her mother somehow. ‘If you’re not coming,’ she screamed, ‘I’m going to leave you here!’
Penny remembered Tilly’s recent geography class about tsunamis, so she gave in, and they both ran to Colin, Tilly’s 
father. After he heard the story, Colin alerted a lifeguard, who evacuated the tourists from the beach. It was a wise decision. Minutes later the killer wave showed up.
In September 2005, back in England, Tilly received the Thomas Gray Award of the Marine Society in recognition of her timely and decisive actions, which saved human lives. But she most cherished the inner satisfaction that she and her family, as well as the about 100 people who had been on the Mai Khao beach, were alive because she alone had recognized the danger.
Nothing happens without warning; it’s just that the signs are often obscure or opaque. Heart attacks, for instance, take many by surprise because they do not recognize the symptoms. The same problem occurs with most natural disasters. But the difficulty to acknowledge the message and act on the spot can be eliminated through training.
Most tsunamis give notice tens of minutes before they reach the shore. One or several of the following signs may be seen, heard, or felt:
. an earthquake occurs
. the sea recedes to a considerable distance
. the sea bubbles
. the water stings the skin
. the sea smells of rotten eggs or oil
. a flash of red light sparks on the sea near the horizon
. a boom is followed by a whistle, or by a jet-plane- or helicopter-like noise
Each phenomenon depends on circumstances, and their explanations vary. The sea’s recession compensates for the soon-to-arrive wave. The bubbling and the stinging of the skin, which resemble the effects of sparkling water, are consequences of the air or gases the wave pushes ahead of it. An earthquake or a volcano eruption may release chemical components with funny smells or lead to reactions that produce electrical discharges. Finally, the noises can be consequences of those reactions or may occur because of the friction between the large wave and the shallow seabed.
Some early warnings, which often occur before any of the physical signs are apparent, may come from nearby animals. The first documented animal reaction to a tsunami appears for the underwater earthquake of 1755, whose epicentre was some 350 kilometres southwest of Lisbon. The combined disaster killed between 60,000 and 100,000 people in Portugal, Spain, and North Africa, with the tsunami playing a lesser role in those deaths.
The earthquake struck on the morning of 1 November, causing wide fissures in Lisbon’s centre. Those who rushed to the docks for safety watched as the receding water revealed a seafloor littered by shipwrecks and cargo. More than an hour after the earthquake, a twenty-metre high tsunami, followed by two more waves, engulfed Lisbon’s harbour and downtown area. The animals are said to have run away from the shore long before the wave showed up.
The reason why animals feel the approach of tsunamis is yet unknown. Some scientists speculate that animals can detect certain earthquake waves, which propagate through the Earth’s crust.
Nevertheless, warning signs exist for tsunamis. But we need to learn how to read them. This is not always easy because we may see danger when there is none. Aesop’s tale about a shepherd boy who cried wolf to make fun of his fellow villagers shows how false alarms could do more harm than no warning at all. Nevertheless, Tilly Smith’s example proves that instruction and vigilance can save lives.
