#31

Trapped by Michael Northrop is book #31 for the year.  I bought it at BOOK FAIR (oh, let's pause and recall the joy of book fair.)  It's about seven kids trapped (hence the title) at their high school by the blizzard of the century.  It's not a far fetched setting given the weather we've been having the past few years.  It taps well into teen-drama-end-of-the-world possibilities...The foreshadowing of death is pretty strong, so when someone dies, it isn't that much of a shocker...in fact it was almost a let-down because the expectation was so high.  But the problems of dark, no water, cold, structural damage...were all real.  It ended in rescue, but left me hanging as far as the kids' families...I would have liked all the loose ends tied up.  How much snow was there?  How many people died?  How long before things returned to normal?  What happened to the teacher?

An interesting simile on page 130 ~ last week we were working on using figurative language in our journals and one of my kids gave the example that the trees looked like broccoli stalks stuck in the ground.  I thought that was pretty creative thinking.  And then I read: Farther out, the tops of trees looked like giant, frosted broccoli sprouts.
fl: We were the last seven kids waiting around to get picked up from Tattawa Regional High School. ll: It was like the world had tilted sideways on its axis.  It had been doing that a lot lately.