Earthquake in the Early Morning

Earthquake in the Early Morning by Mary Pope Osborne is a history adventure for 7 year olds about the morning San Francisco fell down.

What happens

Jack and Annie arrive at five in the morning. Painted wooden houses, gaslights, a trolley car going over the hill, pink streaks in the sky. Annie says it is really pretty here.

A few pages later the cobblestones are rolling like waves, chimneys are coming off roofs and Annie has fallen into a crack in the street.

Jack cannot pull her out, so he fetches bricks, one armful at a time, and hands them down until she can build herself a step and climb. That whole scene is short and horribly tense.

Then the book does something unusual. It slows right down and asks what you actually do afterwards.

There is a wagon taking the bank's money to a boat. A newspaper reporter who wants to know the story. A man in cracked glasses carrying rare books out of a library, who lets them help. And two barefoot brothers sitting on a wall with their aunt, having lost their house and their shoes.

Jack and Annie give them their boots. That is the whole point of it, and it is done in about four lines without anybody making a speech.

This is the last of four errands Morgan has sent them on, and the one they need this time is something to lend. Your reader will spot what is coming a moment before Annie does, which is exactly the right amount of ahead.

It is worth saying that the disaster is not softened. Families stumble out of crumbling houses in their nightclothes. The boys' feet are cut and bleeding. Police carry stretchers past with injured people on them. Their aunt is sobbing into a handkerchief, and the fires that follow burn for three days.

Nobody dies on the page. But this is a real event with real losses in it, so a very sensitive 7 year old might want you in the room. A child who likes knowing how things really were will find it honest and rather moving.

One nice thing for parents. Jack fails. He tries to save the library books and the driver will not listen to him. The book lets him be close to tears about it and does not fix it.

What to read next

Ready for another one? In Revolutionary War on Wednesday the tree house drops them into a freezing, snowy night beside a river, where a general is having second thoughts about a plan.