Towers Falling Review

 *****(3 out of 5)
Towers Falling, by Jewell Parker Rhodes was a novel full of mixed emotions. It was very sad story and has many descriptions of 9/11 so I would suggest it for children 10 or older. Spoiler Alert This tory is about a 10 year old girl named Deja, who has had a tough life. Her father is sick and depressed from his experience during 9/11, her mother constantly working, and two young siblings that Deja has to take care of. Also, they live in a one room apartment with no kitchen. Deja has to cope with a lot. And when Deja goes to a very nice school she meets her first good friends, she learns about diversity from them. While in history class they slowly learn about 9/11, and Deja becomes more curious about what happened to her father on that horrible day. Deja and her friend set off to the memorial and skip school in the process. Deja was truly touched by the horrific amount of peoples' lives that were destroyed. After they were caught, Deja's father told her all about his excruciating experience in 9/11 and Deja finally understood her father for the first time in years.

Apart from the dejected yet interesting story line, I would say that the writing was terrible for the appropriate age group. The events in the novel were meant for a preteens to be informed about this terrible and monumental day. Although the vocabulary was written for a 7 year old. Those aspects of the novel do not match and that makes the story too easy for the appropriate reader. So all in all, I wouldn't read this book again because of its easy words and horrific events.