MUD ANGELS

An Italian boy’s life is upended when a river near his home overflows.

The narrator, an adult looking back, begins his dramatic story calmly, by introducing his younger self, a blond Florentine child who lives with his parents “in the house by the garden, in the city that we loved.” The youngster likes to draw and play with his toy soldiers; his father binds books, and his mother works at a pasticceria. When the River Arno overflows, Papa’s books, Mama’s bread, and the boy’s treasures are washed away, and he and his parents and neighbors must flee to the safety of their rooftops. Help arrives in the form of “shopkeepers and tailors and students and mothers and artists and writers and firemen” and so on, and the boy feels awe (surely readers will as well) as these people salvage what they can from the mud, which ends up plastered to their clothes and faces: “so much mud we called them our Angeli del Fango—the Mud Angels.” In her afterword, Kephart reports that this book is based on the experience of its Florentine illustrator, Innocenti, who lived through the River Arno flood in 1966. Intense color springs from the murky wreckage in Innocenti’s visuals, which are marvels of fine detail work and make clear why he has been amply awarded for his art.

A stunning reminder that the power of goodness can eclipse the ravages of disaster.