Survival

Dolphin Song

Just as Martine is settling into life at Sawubona, the wildlife game reserve, with her grandmother and Jemmy, her white giraffe, she must leave for two weeks on a school trip off the coast of South Africa. What begins as an exciting sea adventure quickly turns perilous when Martine and five of her classmates are thrown overboard into shark-infested waters. They are saved by a pod of dolphins only to end up marooned on a deserted island. The castaways, at odds with one another, must figure out not only how to survive, but how to save the dolphins that have mysteriously beached themselves on the island’s shore. In a gripping tale of courage, friendship, and survival, Martine uses her healing gift and her bushcraft to help humans and animals alike.

St. John also wrote The White Giraffe.

Torn Thread

In an attempt to save his daughter’s life, Eva’s father sends her from Poland to a labor camp in Czechoslovakia where she and her sister survive the war.

The Road of Bones

In school, Yuri is taught that the revolution liberated his country. He learns how the new leaders are always working for the greater good. But the truth is that life for his family and those around him is a brutal, poverty-stricken struggle. The government does nothing except punish those who protest. And one day, to his shock and horror, Yuri himself is branded an “enemy of the state” simply for dropping a few careless words.

In an author’s note, Anne Fine describes The Road of Bones as an adventure-escape story set in “a sort-of Russia, in a sort-of 1930s, under a Stalin-type leader.” This chilling political thriller follows the frantic footsteps of a teenager on the run, a criminal who hasn’t committed a crime, a young man on a path to discovering the truth about how far he will go in order to survive.

Vasco: Leader of the Tribe

Like all the rats in his tribe, Vasco loves nothing more than to scurry around the harbor in search of discarded fish. But one day he discovers that the members of his tribe have died under mysterious circumstances. Now Vasco is alone until he reluctantly joins some fearsome rats who live deep in the sewers. Among them, he makes some loyal friends and some daunting enemies. And, as he begins to understand that humans are masterminding the extinction of all the rats in the city, Vasco sees only one solution: to flee aboard a ship. Courageous, humble, and determined, Vasco does his best to guide his exiled companions to a faraway land where they can live peacefully. But in struggling to establish a new tribe, and to find a place they can call home, Vasco must endure countless dangers and rise to many challenges.

Ookpik: The Travels of a Snowy Owl

Here is the story of one snowy owl’s first year and its struggle to survive. Fed by his parents, Ookpik, which means snowy owl in the Inuit language, grows quickly in the short Arctic summer. By autumn he has learned to hunt on his own, but prey is scarce on the tundra that year. The owl’s instincts tell him that he must leave this land or starve. Ookpik flies south, over the great forests of Canada, and finally lands in the United States, always searching for food and a winter hunting ground.

With vivid watercolor illustrations, Bruce Hiscock depicts the changing landscape, from the treeless Arctic of Baffin Island to the dairy country of eastern New York. There, Ookpik settles for the winter, much to the delight of bird watchers. An author’s note offers additional details on the life of the snowy owl.

The Tent Of Orange Mist

In December 1937 the city of Nanking, China, falls to brutal Japanese invaders, and thus begins a compelling drama of widespread chaos and personal courage. Against a backdrop of burning buildings and random atrocities stands Scald Ibis, the teenage daughter of an eminent scholar, who must transform herself completely in order to survive. With her family gone, she is forced to work as a prostitute in a bordello, changing slowly and painfully from a girl into a woman. Her fortunes improve when a Japanese warlord, Hayashi, takes a fancy to her; but her greatest challenge comes with the sudden appearance of her ailing father, whose inner demons threaten both of their lives.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler’s List Survivor

In the spring of 1942 Hannelore received a letter from Mama at her school in Berlin, Germany–Papa had been arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Six weeks later he was sent home; ashes in an urn. Soon another letter arrived. “The Gestapo has notified your brothers and me that we are to be deported to the East–whatever that means.” Hannelore knew: labor camps, starvation, beatings. How could Mama and her two younger brothers bear that? She made a decision: She would go home and be deported with her family. Despite the horrors she faced in eight labor and concentration camps, Hannelore met and fell in love with a Polish POW named Dick Hillman. Oskar Schindler was their one hope to survive. Schindler had a plan to take eleven hundred Jews to the safety of his new factory in Czechoslovakia. Incredibly both she and Dick were added to his list. But survival was not that simple. Weeks later Hannelore found herself, alone, outside the gates of Auschwitz, pushed toward the smoking crematoria.

Theories of Relativity

Sixteen-year-old Dylan Wallace is living on the streets not through any choice of his own, unlike some of the teenagers he meets in the same situation. He’s been cut loose by his unstable mother, and lost most contact with his two younger brothers. He has nothing but his backpack stuffed with a few precious belongings and the homeless kids he meets. At least he has his theories. No one can take those away from him. Like how every fourth person throws him spare change; how no one does anything for anyone without a price; and how he just might be able to find a place in this complicated world.