Earthquake!: Napier, 1930-31
By (Author) Janine McVeagh
Scholastic New Zealand Limited
Scholastic New Zealand
24th January 2011
New Zealand
Children
Fiction
823.2
Paperback
Width 128mm, Height 198mm
Napier in the 1930s was a time of going without. The story starts on the 25th of June, 1930 - a sad day in the Bourke household - the funeral of Katie's father. This Catholic family must now survive with earnings from the older siblings and the washing Katie's mother takes in. When older brother Tom returns home, after a long absence, it is a help - but with him come other troubles. Katie records the events in the old diary her father used to keep. It is her way of speaking to her dad. Then, in February 1931, disaster strikes the small town ...an earthquake that destroys the school and much of the town centre.
No stranger to the diary format, Janine also wrote Be Counted for the My Story series, which dealt with women's suffrage at the time New Zealand became the first country in the world to allow women to vote.