A brown-skinned young girl remembers the everyday life on the family farm, with her father working the cattle, her mother weeding, and her baby brother’s incessant whimpering. It all changed when the wind came and ominous dark clouds blanketed the sky. She remembers the family running to the root cellar, sitting silently inside in the dark, and when they emerged seeing that their house was destroyed. Despite the loss, the family still needs to eat, so her mother made a meal and the girl washed dishes in a bowl until, without thinking, she began to blow dish soap bubbles through her curled fingers. Her baby brother was the first to giggle, and then the whole family was laughing. “Those laughs didn’t change anything. They made no difference. / Those laughs changed everything. They made all the difference in the world.” This account of remembering a traumatic event in vivid detail, and the realization that loss may be alleviated by human connection, is both dramatic and reassuring. Pencil and paint illustrations in tan, brown, grey, and blue darken as the powerful storm mounts, and then recede to lighter shades by the final hopeful pages. Highly Commended, 2023 Charlotte Zolotow Award ©2022 Cooperative Children’s Book Center (Ages 4-8)

A spare and beautiful story of resilience. It’s a normal day, at first, for a girl on her family farm. But then the wind starts. It blows harder and harder and harder. Her mother grabs her baby brother. Her father opens the root cellar door. They pile in and sit in darkness. But when they emerge, their home is gone. Through a series of short sentences, many beginning with “I remember . . .,” readers experience the girl’s emotional trajectory of shock, terror, sadness and, finally, hope — and even laughter. Sometimes, the winds come for children. And when they do, a story like When the Wind Came can make all the difference.