Jessika Fleck’s Molly and the Twin Towers is a survival story for 10 year olds that follows one girl through the morning of 11 September 2001 in New York.<\/p>\n
Molly is twelve and lives in Tribeca with her two dads, her little sister Adi and her gran. Papa is an airline pilot. Gran is a paramedic with the fire department. The night before, Papa promises to bring Molly a snow globe back from St Louis for her collection.<\/p>\n
The next morning is bright and blue. Molly and Adi squabble over the last of the cereal, and Dad takes them to school, right past the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
Molly is counting dogs out of her classroom window when everybody in the street stops dead and looks up. Then there’s a huge boom. Then another one.<\/p>\n
As the school empties, Molly can only think about Adi. She’s seven, she hates it when Papa flies, and Molly’s scared she’ll overhear the grown-ups whispering about aeroplanes. So Molly and her best friend Zach go back into the empty school to look for her.<\/p>\n
Told by Molly herself, with the chapters marked with the time, it feels as though you’re living through it minute by minute. The small, ordinary things make it land even harder. Adi’s rainbow sweater that she never goes anywhere without. Molly losing a shoe as she runs. The ash that looks like snow.<\/p>\n
This one needs a bit of thought before you hand it over. It’s a real attack, seen from very close up. Both towers come down on the page, Molly loses Adi in the dust for a terrifying few minutes, and for a long stretch she has no idea whether Papa and Gran are safe.<\/p>\n
For a sensitive child, or one with family who fly or work in the emergency services, that could be a lot. If you’ve got a reader who’s curious about what happened that day and ready to talk about it afterwards, it’s a very human way in (seen through the eyes of a big sister who just wants to get everyone home).<\/p>\n
If they want to see how that day still echoes years later, try Saadia Faruqi’s Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero. It’s set in a small Texas town as the twentieth anniversary comes round, and Yusuf’s uncle gives him the journal he kept as a sixth grader in 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jessika Fleck’s Molly and the Twin Towers is a survival story for 10 year olds that follows one girl through the morning of 11 September 2001 in New York. Molly is twelve and lives in Tribeca with her two dads, her little sister Adi and her gran. Papa is an airline pilot. Gran is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12638,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9816,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero","lr_seo_hook":"Two sisters, one terrible morning, and a race to get home in Manhattan."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[29],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[471],"class_list":["post-8095","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-10-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-jessika-fleck"],"yoast_title":"Molly and the Twin Towers: A 9\/11 Survival Story by Jessika Fleck | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Two sisters, one terrible morning, and a race to get home in Manhattan. For ages 10+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n