For a ten to twelve year old - who was born years after the 9/11 attacks, nine, ten: a September 11 story is a simple, straightforward, well-written novel depicting the days leading up to the tragedy and the impact the attacks had on 4 middle school students. One girl is a Muslim, one of the boys is a troubled orphan living with his grandmother in Brooklyn. The other girl has moved with her family to California, although at the time of the move, her mother needed to be in New York City to attend a meeting. I think I remember reading that the mother was working at or with Cantor Fitzgerald. The final boy lives in Shanksville, PA with his family and whose father died a tragic death months before.
What's perfect about this book is that it's not about the attacks. It's about what the lives of these four young people was like on September 9th and 10th... and the 11th. And the changes that have occurred in their lives over the year that follows. The descriptions of the schools on September 11th was so spot on as were Baskins' depictions of the relationships those students had to their classmates.
If you have a young person in your life whom you'd like to give a sense of what 9/11 was all about, this is a wonderful book for that purpose and I highly recommend it.
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