March 16, 2012 5:43 AM When December social work graduates Lucy
Bromer and Caroline Crowley saw the ongoing mental health
struggles of children in Haiti due to the 2010 earthquake, they
decided to offer a solution — in three languages. The duo wrote
and illustrated a 52-page children’s book The Big Shake in
Haiti’s three main languages — Haitian Creole, French, and
English — as their professional project, which is a key
graduation requirement in the Tulane School of Social Work. The
book is intended to help children process the trauma they
experienced. Bromer and Crowley presented their research
recently at the National Association of Social Workers–Louisiana
conference. “Our goal was to create a story that all children of
Haiti could connect to, no matter how severe of an impact the
earthquake had in their lives,” Bromer says. “We want
volunteers, educators, parents and mental health professionals
to have access to a culturally appropriate bibliotherapy tool
that will help them to meet the children where the