I Survived the Attacks of September 11th, 2001

A good children's book showing 9/11 through the eyes of a young boy who finds himself in the midst of the attacks on the Twin Towers. 

I waited a long time before I decided I was emotionally ready to read this one. I was 12 at the time of the attacks, and I lived just outside New York City—close enough to see the pillars of smoke from the towers when on top of a hill. I did not lose anyone, but the moment when I learned the second tower was hit is one of my most salient memories of that time.

I appreciate the author taking the time and doing the immense emotional work of teaching people born after the attacks (or people who were too young to understand at the time) about the event and the immediate aftermath. It was good to read something about the attacks that did not try to explain the motivations of the terrorists (or make arguments about things like the PATRIOT Act).

I think something that would have been good to mention at some point in the Afterword was how after the attacks, there was a spike in hate crimes against Arab Americans, and unwarranted suspicion cast on them and on the entire religion of Islam. The association in white Americans' minds of Arab Americans and Islam with extremism and terrorism is still a problem today.