I already have a line of students waiting to read The Raft (Scholastic 2012) by S.A. Bodeen.  If they are looking for a gripping survival story, they will not be able to put this book down.  I picked the perfect time to read it, too, with the news story yesterday of the fisherman who survived a year at sea in his fishing boat before coming ashore on the Marshall Islands.

Robie thinks she is tough.  The fifteen year old survived the pain of getting her nose pierced by thinking of something worse.  It’s how she gets through unpleasant experiences.  She thinks she’s ready to say a week by herself in Honolulu while her aunt goes away on business, but once a homeless man attacks her, she gets herself on the next flight back to her home on Midway Island.  She’s an experience traveller and knows the pilot.  The co-pilot, Max, is new, but that shouldn’t be a problem.  Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the cargo plane runs into a thunderstorm and loses an engine.  Max shoves a life vest at Robie and prepares the life raft as the plane goes down.  She hits the water and Max pulls her into the raft, and their struggle begins.

Robie and Max don’t have a lot of options–no water and little food (Skittles, anyone?).  If they’re lucky, they might hit an island, but Robie soon realizes that no one knows she got on the plane.  Robie must learn just how tough she is if she has any hope at all to survive.