Vivian, Siobhan. The Last Boy and Girl in the World.

Vivian, Siobhan.  The Last Boy and Girl in the World.  Simon & Schuster  2016  320p  $17.99  ISBN 978-1-4814-5229-8      ms/hs  Realistic fiction  VG-BN

Keeley, like her father, does not believe that Aberdeen must be sacrificed due to weather conditions that are threatening its citizens.  She forges ahead with a new relationship, unable to accept change in the midst of impending disaster.  Vivian is a wonderful storyteller.  She creates characters who are static and dynamic, and sometimes both!  That is no easy task, but in this novel, which concerns the demise of a town, the emotional changes necessary to cope with trauma, and the people who come and go in one’s life, the characters attempt to remain the same but cannot, thereby creating this unique combination of being both static and dynamic.  Throughout the book, until the end, protagonist Keeley is a static character, a jokester who seldom takes life seriously.  When her town is flooded by torrential spring rains, and the governor announces that the town will be sacrificed for the construction of a dam and a lake, she cannot even take that seriously.  More important is her budding relationship with Jesse, her day-to-day friendship with best friend Morgan, and the year-end prom and graduation, which have both been put in jeopardy by the flooding.  The flood and the reaction of the townspeople as they face the decision of whether to accept the government buyout or fight to remain, are creatively interwoven with the flood and its impact on the teens, who face the same struggles as their parents without actually experiencing the responsibility of decision-making.  Readers will love the setting of a town about to die, they will relate to Keeley’s friendship with Morgan, and they will be interested until the end to see if Keeley ends up with Jesse.  That is the drama of this book, primarily because readers know from the prologue that the town is going to drown. This book has small amounts of sexual innuendo, no drugs and no violence, making it an appropriate book for middle-school students.  The novel definitely deserves a spot in high-school libraries as well as public libraries.  Vivian creates believable conflicts and has a powerful message.   

Summary: Keeley, like her father, does not believe that Aberdeen must be sacrificed due to weather conditions that are threatening its citizens.  She forges ahead with a new relationship, unable to accept change in the midst of impending disaster. 

Natural disasters-Fiction                                   --Martha Squaresky

Bosworth, Jennifer. Struck.

Bosworth, Jennifer.     Struck.     Macmillan/Farrar Strauss      373p  $17.99  978-0-374-37283-5           jr/sr       VG-BN    Science fiction  

Mia Price is a lightning addict -- that is to say, Mia is one of those human beings who can take a lightning strike into her body and still survive.  She discovers that there are more people like her in the city of Los Angeles, where she lives.  As the story opens, she and her family are trying to survive in a disaster area that was struck by lightning and experienced an earthquake.

 
After the disaster, school opens and the city agrees to feed any kid who goes back to school and give them coupons to buy food.  Mia and her brother go to school every day, but at home her mother is trying to deal with the shock of the earthquake that almost killed her.  In the midst of all this, there are two groups taking advantage of the disaster and the people who are in shock by inviting them to attend religious revivals.

Mia finds herself caught between the two groups, and she does not understand why they are so interested in her.  When the truth comes out, she has to act fast to help save her mother, her brother, and her sanity.

This is a very good story about survival under devastating conditions.  The heroine keeps it together and is able to figure everything out, and she is willing to sacrifice her life for her family. -- Magna Diaz
                 

Natural disasters – Fiction                              

Laybourne, Emmy. Monument 14.

Laybourne, Emmy.  Monument 14.  Macmillan/ Feiwel & Friends      296p  $16.99      978-0-312-56903-7   hs  VG-BN Realistic Fiction    

     

This is the story of six Colorado high schoolers, two middle schoolers, and six little kids caught in a gigantic hailstorm on the way to school one morning on their two school buses.  Mrs. Wooly, one of the bus drivers, rescues these kids from both of the buses and ensconces them in the Greenway superstore.  One of the fourteen kids is a boy scout and another is a technical nerd.  The rest range from the superstar football player to five-year-old carrot-topped twins Henry and Caroline.

After Mrs. Wooly gets everyone settled and sealed into the superstore, she leaves to get help.  Shortly the group moves to the media department of the store to watch TV.  It is then that they learn that a volcano has erupted on the Canary Islands and caused a half-mile tall mega-tsunami to race eastward and wipe out the east coast of the U. S.  The result is the creation of super cells that race across the country and over the Rockies, pelting everyone with giant hailstones and destructive winds, only to be followed by an earthquake that has ruptured NORAD’s germ warfare site, causing even more disaster.

The novel tells the story of how these fourteen kids come together to organize, comfort each other, and survive in a monstrous environmental disaster. 

The character development in this novel is superb.  The reader is drawn into the little personality clashes and mini-dramas going on among the characters while they are trying to figure out how to survive.  The relationships between the older kids and the younger ones are also well portrayed, with the older ones taking on parental roles in trying to protect the younger ones from the frightening truth about what is going on outside of the store, and what their chances of survival are.  The writing is superb and edgy, and readers will keep turning the pages in this gripping post-Apocolyptic saga.

Natural Disasters-Fiction, Post-Apocolyptic Fiction   --Linda McNeil