About this item
A strange and sticky piece of history. January 15, 1919, started off as a normal day in Boston's North End. Workers took a break for lunch, children played in the park, trains made trips between North and South Stations. Then all of a sudden a large tank of molasses exploded, sending shards of metal hundreds of feet away, collapsing buildings, and coating the harborfront community with a thick layer of sticky-sweet sludge. Deborah Kops takes the reader through this bizarre and relatively unknown disaster, including the cleanup and court proceedings that followed. What happened? Why did the tank explode? Many people died or were injured in the accident - who was to blame? Kops focuses on several individuals involved in the events of that day, creating a more personal look at this terrible tragedy.
About the Author
Deborah Kops has written more than twenty nonfiction books for children and young adults. Her most recent title is Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment (Calkins Creek, 2017) .
Kops has been in love with words - writing, reading, and listening to them - for as long as she can remember. When she was a child, her mother read her fairytales and her father told her stories. After she learned to read, Nancy Drew books became an early favorite. When she was in fourth grade, a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Silvers, set aside plenty of time for creative writing. Kops wrote long, dramatic stories, often with tragic endings.
As an adult, Kops discovered that she enjoyed doing research as much as she liked writing. Now she writes books on subjects she wants to learn more about herself, from The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 (Charlesbridge, 2012) to the story of Alice Paul, one of the great feminist leaders of the twentieth century.
