HIGHER GROUND

A massive flood leaves a family marooned on the top of their apartment building.

Siblings staying with their grandmother find themselves stuck in a catastrophic deluge, with the water level nearly reaching the top of their building. Isolated, with little hope of escape, they settle in, creating a home inside a shed, farming on the rooftop garden, fishing in the floodwaters, and scavenging their devastated city’s detritus as it floats by. The children learn essential survival skills from their wise, patient elder. But as the seasons pass, Grandma grows weaker, the waters continue rising, and eventually she insists that the kids seek a safer haven while she remains to tend the garden. The story alternates between paneled pages and full-page illustrations. Simple guiding narrative text appears beneath the lovingly detailed, selectively illuminated images, underscoring the action being depicted. Masterfully rendered splendors of nature presented in tiny panels or vignettes, from blue whales to the smallest seeds, glow with goodness amid a painfully prescient vision of one terrifying potential future. With a gentle hand, Suwannakit offers a climate crisis fable that would be perfect for lovers of the film Flow or Guojing’s powerful picture books depicting a world ravaged all too swiftly by human disregard. The family at the story’s center have dark hair and pale skin.

A bittersweet, beautifully drawn appreciation of nature’s bounty and the best of the human spirit.