Bryn Barnard

This is a great book that I found at the library book sale where I'm sure they were going to get rid of it one way or another to try and forget about the just--starting pandemic. It may have been written for "young readers", but I found it fascinating. The illustrations are wonderful, the kind I remember from old picture books of my childhood, filled with informative text material that is probably unknown, even to medical doctors, unless their specialty is epidemiology. I picked it up because I was curious and didn't have time to leisurely read it on the spot.
I have read Daniel DeFoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" and have always found it interesting that these sweeping contagious illnesses can change the course of history in many ways outside of the mayhem and death that ensue. For example, Barnard explains how Cholera cleaned up cities and Yellow Fever impacted the slave trade. This book definitely has well-researched material for thought, and I would recommend it to any adult, "young reader", or precocious grade schooler with a love of history and interest in medicine.… (more)

This book is quite a lengthy read as it tells the stories of natural disasters and their impacts on the world. It's gripping and holds the reader in with fascinating facts as well as a touch of whit. In the classroom, this is much too long a book to be used as a read aloud, but could be a great jumping off point for learning about research and how we can read books for information. It would best be used with older students, 5th grade and up. One great thing about this book is it includes quite a lot of maps, and each maps have a key for seeing how far the disaster went and what was affected the most.… (more)