A scary thing indeed.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Artifact - "A Scary Thing Happened: A Children's Coloring Book to Help Cope With Disasters" on Federal Emergency Management Agency website - Brief article

AS APRIL ENDED, America faced fears of a flu epidemic, a low-flying plane over Manhattan brought back 9/11 flashbacks, and New Orleans remained a disaster area almost four years after Hurricane Katrina. The folks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) surveyed this wreckage and decided to take bold action.

The first order of business: tidying up the FEMA website. In the process, they unearthed and removed a rather unusual publication called A Scary Thing Happened: A Children's Coloring Book to Help Cope With Disasters. First published in 2003, A Scary Thing had been living on the FEMA site ever since, traumatizing kids with color-it-yourself pictures of towering infernos and children weeping outside hospitals for their dead kin. One page features a smiling child instructing wee...