The impact of a natural disaster on a family unfolds in wordless, digitally created spreads in this first book from Argentinean illustrator Villa. In a small house near an inland body of water, a mother and her two children enjoy leisure time in the living room; outside, however, the family's father glances skyward with concern. Dark clouds barrel toward the house on the following page, swallowing up the eerily yellow sky. With rosy cheeks and red noses, the family constructs a stone barrier around the house, secures the windows, and departs for a hotel. In ghostly sequences, the floodwaters invade the empty structure, tossing furniture and wrecking the lower levels. Upon the family's return, a moment of despair transitions quickly into productivity as they repair the damage. While the story's hopeful ending is reassuring, the rapidness and ease with which the house is rebuilt diminishes the impact of the storm somewhat. Nonetheless, the book is a useful resource for adults to use with children, especially given the damaging hurricanes in recent years. Ages 6-8.
Simple as its title. No words here – no need. . . .this story wrings a surprising dose of understated optimism from familiar recent events. Doomsday preppers: you can go home again.
This 32-page hardcover tells the gripping stories of families who face the devastation of natural disasters. Told without words, using only the intense and beautiful illustrations of the author, a family braces for the worst when rains and flooding threaten their happy home.
Your Family Northwest Indiana Times
Argentinean artist Alvaro Villa brings the impending storm and floodwaters to life in these bold painted illustrations.
This beautiful wordless book sets a scene all too familiar in Cedar Rapids. The images begin with an idilyic setting of a family enjoying life in their home. As a storm approaches, the family must protect their home as best as they can and evacuate. They return to the devastation of the storm. The book comes full circle when the house is rebuilt and enjoyed again.
Absolutely a must purchase. . . .The teacher in me would use this book to teach empathy and cause and effect. I would also use this as a tool to foster discussion around books.
Simple as its title. No words here – no need. . . .this story wrings a surprising dose of understated optimism from familiar recent events. Doomsday preppers: you can go home again.
New York Parents Magazine
I've never seen a book like this. It's exceptional. The children who have recently experienced Hurricane Sandy came immediately to my mind. The pictures unfold so beautifully telling a story of a family who is trying to save their house from a flood. Their home is destroyed but it's the rebuilding that will help children understand when an awful tragedy happens - life can go on and you can be happy again. What makes Flood so powerful is it is wordless. This is a really smart and non-threatening approach to help children open up about their feelings and fears after a traumatic event. Most importantly it delivers the message that starting over is possible and can be positive. If you are working with children who have been impacted by hurricanes, floods, or any type of house tragedy (fire) please get this book. It's a very therapeutic and healing resource.
Books That Heal Kids blog
"Flood" is a dramatic, wordless recounting of a natural disaster chasing a family from their home. The miracle here is not only the safety that the family members enjoy but also the eventual recovery of their home.
"7 great new illustrated children's books" The Christian Science Monitor
This timely wordless picture book speaks volumes about coming of a storm and the resulting flood. . . .There is hope as the waters recede and although adults will shake their heads at the seemingly “easy” cleanup and restoration, children will find comfort in the sunny end.
Vivid digital artwork conveys the power of nature and the resilience required of those who live in its path.
"More than Words" Book Links
Flood” has no words, but doesn’t really need them (which is a hard thing for a writer to admit). . . .The images by Argentinian artist Villa, are absolutely pregnant with meaning, nuanced and riveting.
Pages blog The Denver Post
Fall 2013 Tillywig Brain Child Award
Tillywig Toy & Media Awards
I thought that this book was very happy when they rebuilt their house. I am glad that they were still happy that they were still a family even though there was a flood. . . .[the] pictures were very nice.
Kids Book Review San Francisco Book Review
Flood is one of the most powerful books I have seen in a very long time. The book has beautiful illustrations that alone convey the story of the fierceness of nature and the resilience of man. Flood allows children to tell the story as they turn each page, revealing exquisite art on each spread. Never have illustrations delivered so much. Kids will see a complete drama from happy beginning, to tragic lose, rebuilding, and finally the restoration of home and hope.
A wordless narrative of epic proportions follows a family’s survival as rising tides threaten and then consume their home. Stunning, full-bleed illustrations convey all we need to know about their ordeal: that they make it through the terrifying episode together.
Villa’s wordless picture book is a haunting look at a family whose home might be wiped out by a storm. Anyone who has lived through a hurricane will catch their breath at Villa’s unnerving watercolors, generously laid out across long, horizontal spreads. Familiar, nervous moments are found on every page: Dad preparing the windows while the kids, oblivious, play on the floor. The ominous glow of a weatherman delivering his warning soliloquies. Rain-battered volunteers surrounding the house with sandbags. And, of course, the worried family deciding to drive away, waving farewell to their brave, lonely house. The inability to know what nature has in store is quietly gut-wrenching—until a devastating spread depicts the interior of the house as storming with water, furniture being tossed like sticks. Villa’s sole, but significant, misstep is the too-quick turnaround: a single spread of house repair leads to the family enjoying a perfectly restored home. A worthwhile reminder that things are darkest before dawn, though not quite up to the visceral truths that make the rest of the book so moving.
A final book for young children does not contain any words, and this seems right, because the shocking image to which "Flood" (Capstone, 32 pages, $15.95) builds, and from which it recedes, will leave the reader speechless. In a series of strongly colored paintings, Argentine illustrator Alvaro F. Villa shows a young family in a pretty clapboard house not far from an estuary. Bad weather is brewing: Great clouds boil toward the house as, inside, the family watches a TV weatherman warning of trouble ahead. Friends come with sandbags to encircle the house, but the rain gets too heavy, and the family has to leave. Though the final pages will lift the heart with scenes of renewal, the central image of floodwaters roaring into the family's living room, knocking pictures off the wall and foaming hungrily at the stairs, leaves an impression that no child will quickly forget.
Children learn that although scary storms and natural disasters may arrive, this is a time for their family to seek safety and comfort in each other. When they pull together, they can get through what happens and then rebuild their lives. Reading along with a grown-up, kids can talk about their fears and what it means to be a family. Flood is a beautiful book that you won’t soon forget.
Susan Heim on Parenting blog
Who need words with such powerful, telling illustrations? In “Flood,” a wordless picture book that assaults and recedes with the same rapidity as its subject matter, Argentinian illustrator Alvaro F. Villa tells more than words ever could.
Wordless books play to a child's inclination to linger over visual detail, and this exceptionally well-done story rewards that attention. . . .Argentinean artist Villa captures the drama in digital paintings — vivid, almost garish — that tell of eerie storm skies, whooshing floodwaters and parents lying awake in the television's glow. Big weather provokes anxiety, but "Flood" reminds readers that eventually the sun returns. Grade: A.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
...a dramatic and poetic visual narrative of the experience of a family whose home is flooded. Children can learn by observing the detailed illustrations to retell the events of the family preparations, the impending weather change and the family's evacuation to safety before the flood. The final pictures convey a positive message about the power of rebuilding, repairing and replacing what the flood had damaged.
Children's Bookshelf Midwest Book Review
In this wordless book, painterly spreads show a family of four at its river-flanked home preparing for a storm, learning of the storm’s projected severity, leaving the house, returning to find it wrecked, and working with others to restore it. This harrowing but immensely moving account is less about nature’s capacity to destroy than about people’s capacity to rebound and help.
...no words found or needed on any of the strikingly–beautiful 32 pages. This visual storytelling is successful due to the emotionality of Villa’s artistry and the pulsing nature of the subject matter.
The evocative illustrations in Flood follow a family as they anticipate, prepare and eventually evacuate their home in the face of a rising flood. The absence of words in the book leaves children and parents an opportunity to build the story together and talk about the family, the power of nature and ultimately, of hope.
...beautiful and moving, and ultimately uplifting…
