FEMA’s 9/11 coloring book

Does coloring in frightening pictures help kids cope with disasters?

“Now, from the same guys that brought you the Katrina rescue effort," said Jimmy Orr in The Christian Science Monitor, "comes the 9/11 coloring book. Joking? Sadly, no." The Federal Emergency Management Agency just decided to pull the book—called A Scary Thing Happened—off its website, but it was placed there in 2003, on Michael Brown's watch. Once again, heckuva job, Brownie.

Counselors often ask children to draw and color as a way to work through their feelings after a traumatic event, said Emily Friedman in ABC News. It's called art therapy. But some therapists warn that it's best to let the kids pick the images—because thrusting a graphic image of traumatic events "like the 9/11 attacks could spark anxiety in adults, let alone in young children."

This is just more of the same old 9/11 revisionism, said John Hinderaker in Power Line. "It started with the television networks imposing de facto censorship on all footage of the Sept. 11 attacks," and it's picking up pace as the Obama administration reviews everything the Bush team did. "Eventually the only public legacy of the Sept. 11 attacks will be photos of American soldiers brutalizing detainees."

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