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.
Gary Paulsen has done it again. In Woods Runner (Scholastic 2010) he has combined outdoor survival with action-packed history. Who knew the American Revolution could be so exciting?
Samuel lives to hunt in the vast wilderness surrounding his parents’ cabin in their settlement in the British colonly of Pennsylvania. One day while he is out hunting, a band of British soldiers and their Iroquois allies attack the settlement. Samuel returns to find a scene of devestation. The only good news is that his parents have been taken prisoner rather than killed outright.
Samuel uses his hunting skills to track the army that has his parents. Along the way he must learn to distinguish between friend and enemy when they look very much alike. He battles the British and is taken in by friends of the Patriots before he finds his parents in the heart of British power, New York City.
Through Samuel’s story, Paulsen reveals the horror of war. This book has little of heroic battles or the great names you learn about in history books. Instead, he captures how war disrupts the lives of people trying to live out their daily lives.
In between each chapter Paulsen includes a historical note that gives background information relevant to the story. I enjoyed these extras. It would have been hard to weave so much historical information into the story, but the story is enriched for knowing it. Trust me, even this history is not the same as what you learn in yor history books.
