The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee.

Suspenseful, fast-paced, and brief enough to engage even reluctant readers. Madeleine relates her own riveting, immersive story in believable detail, her increasingly sophisticated thoughts, as years pass, sweeping down spare pages in thin lines of verse in this Hatchet for a new age. But it’s loneliness that becomes her greatest enemy and books from the local library that ultimately sustain her. Later she survives both a tornado and a wildfire that sweeps through her neighborhood. At one point she encounters but evades a vicious group of looters. After rescuing a neighbor’s dog, her only companion, she becomes increasingly sophisticated in her survival efforts, collecting food and water, learning how to light a fire in her father’s woodstove and, bicycle helmet secured in place, teaching herself to drive a car. A Colorado winter will be coming soon enough. At first, there’s still electricity and running water, but as days turn into weeks and then months, utilities fail, and Madeleine comes to realize that she’s truly on her own. Although there had been hints of unrest, she has no real idea why everyone left or when-perhaps if-they’ll ever come back. Twelve-year-old Madeleine Albright Harrison is inadvertently left behind when her whole region is abruptly evacuated in the night. (Jan.Freeman’s middle-grade debut starts with a wallop and carries on from there. Agent: Deborah Warren, East West Literary. The explanation of the “imminent danger” that left Maddie alone is vague and hasty, however-after readers follow a worthy protagonist through three years of solitude and despair, the abrupt resolution disappoints.

The lengths to which resourceful Maddie must go in order to survive feel realistic, and Freeman’s well-paced verse magnifies significant and harrowing moments. Most of all, she must overcome the unending loneliness and uncertainty that each day brings. With only the neighbor’s rottweiler as a companion, Maddie spends the next three years surviving on her own-gathering food from abandoned stores, navigating ever-changing and sometimes dangerous weather, and hiding from looters and wild dogs. An unexpected middle-of-the-night evacuation leaves Maddie completely alone in her small Colorado town, without power, information, or any way to communicate with loved ones. When 12-year-old Maddie’s plans for a secret sleepover fall through, she decides to stay at her grandparents’ empty summer apartment solo, having already lied to her divorced parents about her whereabouts. Poet Freeman makes her middle grade debut with this engaging survival story in verse based on Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Alone by megan freeman