Flooded: Winner of the Klaus Flugge Prize for Illustration 2023

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When children experience The Flood Zone, their behavior changes. They yell, bite, or run away. They withdraw and lose concentration. They blame and lie. In this state, children are unable to be rational, regulated, or otherwise compliant. Even the most motivated child (or adult) with the greatest coping strategies won’t be able to identify or manage their emotions in The Flood Zone.

When your brain perceives danger, your body and mind will go instantly into one of three modes—flight, fight, or freeze. Your heart races, your body tenses up, your hands shake, and your emotions take over rational thought. But it's not explicitly sad. Characters do not mourn, usually. They are numb, exhausted, very emotionally controlled. We see more destruction than death. There are moments of human horror - notably a brutal Tibetan enclave - but Flood concerns itself more with ecological devastation. I'm not sure what to make of this, if it's a sign of realism with people being too worn out and overwhelmed to emote, or a limitation of Baxter's writing range.This book teaches us an invaluable lesson. Mother Nature, while beautiful, can show her fury. Natural disasters can’t be stopped and are usually devastating. Personal belongings and effects washed away, ruined. Never to be recovered again. This is a brilliant debut novel from the winner of the World Illustration Awards Overall New Talent winner for 2020. The unnamed city wakes up to a small amount of water everywhere and everybody ignores it and gets on with their lives, except for one small creature who knows it will become a problem, but nobody listens. As life in the city becomes more and more problematic even the large creatures realise they must help the smaller ones, they all become fed up with having to deal with the issues of working in water all the time. Even the excitement of wearing Wellington boots all the time is not enough! It is at this point that everyone realises they must work together to solve the problem and to not let this sort of thing happen ever again. Human ingenuity keeps some of us afloat (har har) longer than we should have, and enables the rise of a new generation.

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. I am a huge fan of apocalyptic fiction. On the surface, this book seems to fit the bill. The seas are rising, the earth is flooding - what will humanity do to survive? What's not to like - right? Well, it turns out - quite a bit.The text is minimal. I recommend this strong new talent in the making. The book has a strong climate change and community message that is vital for everyone now. This is a book that will appeal to all ages even though it is intended for the young. I look forward to seeing much more from Mariajo. I have to say I finished this book wondering what the message was? If it was to make people aware of the dangers of global warming it didn't touch on what had actually happened to bring about this world with any clarity. If it was that tragedy brings out the worst in humans then it did a good job but it didn't go deep enough. What’s more important than the storm itself is what happens when the worst of it clears. When we witness communities come together to help one another rebuild their homes and businesses, schools and hospitals. Cleaning up the community, shaping up the community, striving to make it better than it was before. That’s a powerful message to send to children.

The timing of this book & this message is truly miraculous! I think it's safe to say that many of us have questioned God through the last calendar year. When circumstances are unknown & unpredictable, we feel flooded.I totally lost myself in this book. In the catastrophic events that unfold, the nightmarish situations that worsened with every chapter. It was scary, horrific, and depressing... but at the same time, resilient. A very strong story that captured the spirit of humanity in a race for survival, peppered with shaky and complicated relationships. When the ocean rises as fast as it does in this post-apocalyptic world, what can you really do to beat it? I found myself wondering about that often enough, and was horrified to see where it led the survivors.

Kun vesi alkaa nousta enemmän kuin tiedemiehet suostuvat ymmärtämään ja hallitukset yrittävät rauhoitella kansalaisiaan pääsevät päähenkilömme rikkaan visionäristin suojeluksessa kokemaan jotain mistä muut eivät voi uneksiakaan. Kirjassa seurataan nelikon elämää n. 40 vuoden aikajänteellä tulvan valtaaman maapallon myllerryksissä. Mahtavan avartavia ajatuksia nousi dystopiaa rakastavaan mieleeni ihmisen ahdingosta kun nouseva vesi valtaa merkittävässä määrin ihmiskunnan elämiseen soveltuvaa maapinta-alaa. The flood comes gradually at first. All the animals ignore the obvious and go about their busy lives, disjointed from one another and preoccupied by their own problems. Eventually, the flood water reaches a height that they can no longer ignore and they have to work together to save their city. With this book I worked to maintain the freshness and spontaineity that I was creating in my sketchbook, being able to translate into final artwork. The main technique used in this artwork was acrylic ink, with deep pen and dry brushes. I also used graphite for some textures. I assembled all images together and added color in Photoshop. The book’s strength is, oddly for a “hard” science fiction effort, in the characters. Each is a well crafted and unique personality. Most are personable enough that we care about their fates, sometimes grudgingly, others are distasteful enough that we also care about their fates, although perhaps with animosity. But our affection or disdain won’t last nearly as long as the book — the end simply takes too long to reach. The first half or so moves adequately fast, when the extent of the disaster is still being revealed, but once we are clued in to the world’s ultimate fate... the details of how individuals react are undoubtedly necessary, but not riveting enough to keep things interesting. The floods in south Yorkshire and Derbyshire may not be on the same scale, but people living there may also feel they have been abandoned. And the time may come when the cities of Britain are as threatened by floodwater as New Orleans was during Katrina. Clare Morrall’s When the Floods Came is a precise, disturbing vision of a flooded Birmingham, which serves as a companion piece to JG Ballard’s reimagining of London as a tropical lagoon in The Drowned World. In Morrall’s dystopia, the capital of the flood-diminished country has moved to Brighton, and disease has wiped out most of the population. Those who are left depend on Washington and Beijing for food and medicine. The opportunities for preventing these visions of the future coming true are reducing; but they are not yet gone.

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Before I started writing this review, I wondered whether I was being unfair to this book, as it is so out of my comfort zone. I read this for my ‘non-Goodreads.’ Reading group, and it is certainly not the type of book I would usually choose. However, on reflection, I don’t think I can judge it on anything other than how I felt about it – which was bored and irritated. As the water continues to rise and humans try to find a way to explain or beat the flood, chaos takes over every corner of the world. And countries start to disappear. I was horrified when I read about what happens to Sydney. :(