Against The Odds

 If you were in a life-threatening situation, would you be able to gather your wits and all available resources to survive?

 

15 year-old Robie lives on the Midway Atoll with her parents, who are scientists. She visits her aunt on Honolulu, but when  Jillian has to leave town unexpectedly, Robie plans to stay there by herself for a few days and enjoy a rare taste of freedom. When Robie is accosted by a dangerous stranger on the street, she decides to fly back to Midway on a cargo plane, a trip that she has taken many times. However, when an unxpected storm hits, the plane crashes in the Pacific, and Robie is thrown from the window with a life raft by Max, the co-pilot. Adrift for several days in the middle of the ocean with hunger, thirst, and sharks as their constant companions, Robie and the semi-conscious Max must figure out how to stay alive against formidable obstacles. What would you do?

 

The Raft by S.A. Bodeen is one of the most exciting survival stories I have read in a long time.

 

I also highly recommend Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell.

A Courageous Fight For Survival

What do you do when your future suddenly takes an unexpected turn?

 

When you face a crisis can you learn to become resourceful and strong?

 

Matilda Cook is a strong-willed sixteen-year-old girl who lives in Philadelphia, which, at the end of the eighteenth century, was the nation's capital. She complains about being overworked and her mother's steadfast determination to find her a "suitable" husband.. She helps her mother and grandfather run their family's coffee house, and envisions how to make it the most prominent business establishment in the neighborhood so she can become rich. However, during the summer of 1793, the yellow fever descends on Philadelphia with a vengeance, and decimates the population. Mattie's concerns are soon forgotten, because when her mother becomes ill, the teen and her grandfather are sent to the countryside to escape the disease. When Mattie returns to Philadelphia to await the end of the epidemic, she finds that her mother has disappeared, and a once vibrant city is fraught with danger at every turn. How will Mattie survive on her own?

 

Fever 1793 is an exciting work of historical fiction that is based on a real-life yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia that killed thousands of people in just a few months.The author expertly interweaves a compelling story, well-researched facts, and engaging characters.