This summer, we read a book called Finding Someplace, by Denise Lewis Patrick. It’s about a girl in Hurricane Katrina. Her name is Reesie, and her birthday is coming up soon. But her birthday comes, and Hurricane Katrina hits. She is in her neighbor’s house with her boyfriend’s brother (André) and his wife, (Eritrea) and neighbor, Miss Martine. We had to write about who we thought the best character was, and what we would bring if we had to evacuate our houses on short notice. A bit about the backpack part: In the book, Reesie’s godparents plan to take her out of New Orleans, but all the highways in the town go one way: OUT. Parraine (godfather) is trying to find a way in, and over the phone (no idea how they had WiFi in the biggest Hurricane ever), tells her to pack up the most important things she had. This led to the idea of the backpack project: We had to pick things that we thought we would need if we needed to evacuate on short notice. Here is mine:

I packed some pretty crucial things, and I believe that would really help. Next we had to write about who we thought was the hero. Here is a picture of my paper:

I wrote that Dré was the hero because he helped everyone onto the boat to rescue them, punched a hole in the roof so the group could get to the roof, told a white lie that Miss Martine was his grandmother so she could get help, and he saved her life. Dré kept morale high by singing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ to Reesie. Dré is brave for surviving the world’s worst hurricane. That is all for today, and I hope you enjoyed!