Survival

A Long Walk To Water

Combining simple, economical prose with a profound awareness of the hardships that life sometimes brings to young people, Linda Sue Park has crafted a suspenseful, accessible novel that goes beyond newspaper headlines to illuminate human experience. Includes an afterword from the author and one from Salva Dut. A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about a girl in Sudan in 2008 and a boy in Sudan in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours’ walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the “lost boys” of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2

Between Sisters

The future looks bleak indeed for 16-year-old Gloria. Living in a poor area of Accra, she dreams of becoming a dressmaker, but after failing 13 out of 15 subjects on her final exams it seems unlikely to happen. Then a distant relative, Christine, offers to move Gloria to Kumasi to look after her son. In exchange, Christine will pay for Gloria to go to dressmaking school. In Kumasi everything seems possible, and life is grander than anything Gloria has ever experienced. But Kumasi is also full of temptations, like the popular boutique where the owner takes a fancy to Gloria and encourages her to buy clothes on credit. There’s also the smooth-talking Dr. Kusi, who gives Gloria rides in his red Passat and invites her to bring food to his apartment. Eventually betrayed by those around her, Gloria must reconcile her future, her family, and her desires.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 2

Stolen

Gemma, 16, is on layover at Bangkok Airport, en route with her parents to a vacation in Vietnam. She steps away for just a second, to get a cup of coffee. Ty–rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar–pays for Gemma’s drink. And drugs it. They talk. Their hands touch. And before Gemma knows what’s happening, Ty takes her. Steals her away. The unknowing object of a long obsession, Gemma has been kidnapped by her stalker and brought to the desolate Australian Outback. STOLEN is her gripping story of survival, of how she has to come to terms with her living nightmare–or die trying to fight it.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 1

The Big Wave

Kino lives on a farm on the side of a mountain in Japan. His friend, Jiya, lives in a fishing village below. Everyone, including Kino and Jiya, has heard of the big wave. No one suspects it will wipe out the whole village and Jiya’s family, too. As Jiya struggles to overcome his sorrow, he understands it is in the presence of danger that one learns to be brave, and to appreciate how wonderful life can be.The famous story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave destruction of his family and village.

A Small Tall Tale From The Far Far North

small tallThis spectacularly beautiful, inventive picture-book journal of life with the Alaskan Eskimos at the turn of the century is a brilliant leap of the imagination and the embodiment of the aphorism “every picture tells a story.”

Full color throughout.

New York Times Best Illustrated Book Of The Year, Ala Notable Children’s Book

Diamond Willow

There’s
more to me than
most people
see.

Twelve-year-old Willow would rather blend in than stick out. But she still wants to be seen for who she is. She wants her parents to notice that she is growing up. She wants her best friend to like her better than she likes a certain boy. She wants, more than anything, to mush the dogs out to her grandparents’ house, by herself, with Roxy in the lead. But sometimes when it’s just you, one mistake can have frightening consequences . . . And when Willow stumbles, it takes a surprising group of friends to help her make things right again.

Using diamond-shaped poems inspired by forms found in polished diamond willow sticks, Helen Frost tells the moving story of Willow and her family. Hidden messages within each diamond carry the reader further, into feelings Willow doesn’t reveal even to herself.

Return to Hawk’s Hill

Running away from a vicious trapper, seven-year-old Ben MacDonald is separated from his family and eventually ends up on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, where he is taken in by a tribe of Metis Indians.

 

Ice Drift

The year is 1868, and fourteen-year-old Alika and his younger brother, Sulu, are hunting for seals on an ice floe attached to their island in the Arctic. Suddenly they hear the terrible sound of the floe breaking free from land. The boys watch with horror as they start drifting south–away from their home, their family, and everything they’ve ever known. Throughout their six-month-long journey down the Greenland Strait, the boys face bitter cold, starvation, and vicious polar bears. And yet, in this moving testament to the bond between brothers, Alika and Sulu remain hopeful that one day they’ll be rescued . Includes a map, a glossary of Inuit words and phrases, and an author’s note.

Winter Camp

Two orphaned siblings struggle to survive a harsh Alaskan winter looking after a badly wounded miner, while their guardian, an old Athabascan Indian who has taught them the ways of their ancestors, searches for help.