Tag Archives: Disasters

Bloom

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Bloom by Kenneth Oppel

Book of the Week: 29 November 2020

 

Illustration by M.S. Corley

‘Seth gazed out the window. Below, the Vancouver airport looked normal enough, until he noticed the sinkholes in the runways. A jet jutted out of a huge crater, its left wing snapped against the tarmac. Over neighbourhoods, Seth saw streets turned into canyons by the tall black grass. Roadblocks were everywhere, pit-plant holes in the parks and golf courses. Charred sinkholes in the asphalt and sidewalks. Hardly anyone outside. Even from up here, he could see pollen glittering in the air.’

World-wide havoc is being wreaked by disturbingly destructive alien plants that destroy crops, block out the light and threaten human life. On Salt Spring Island, three teenagers: Anya, who is allergic to ‘everything’, Petra, who has a rare allergy to water, and Seth, who is a foster child with mysterious scars that he tries to keep hidden, are the only people who are not only unaffected, but whose health seems to improve. Can they play a role in defeating this threat to life on the planet?

This is a wonderfully detailed creation of a catastrophe, aspects of which might sound familiar to us in the present pandemic. There are  action-packed sequences of horrific battles with these monster plants and gruesome descriptions of those who fall foul of them. The botanical details are well-researched too. Every time I checked some unlikely-sounding fact, it turned out to be true. This is the first in a trilogy, with ‘Hatch’ due in the autumn and ‘Thrive’ in summer 2021.

If you would like to read more books featuring scary plants, try ‘Boy in the Tower’ by Polly Ho-Yen or the classic ‘Day of the Triffids’ by John Wyndham.

Kenneth Oppel has written has written a variety of books. The following are all in the Library: ‘The Boundless’, ‘Every Hidden Thing’, ‘Half Brother’, ‘This Dark Endeavour’, ‘Such Wicked Intent’ and my personal favourite, ‘The Nest’.

If you enjoy books about alien threats to life on Earth, try books by Mark Walden, Pittacus Lore, Rick Yancey and Virginia Bergin. Here is a list I made for Year 8 about alien invasions.

 

Book of the Week (Lockdown edition)

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Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien

Book of the Week: 10 May 2020

My 1981 copy. Cover illustration by Lucinda Cowell

On a farm in a hidden green valley, a sixteen year old girl is the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust. Her family, and Mr and Mrs Klein the local store owners, set off to see if the Amish families who lived to the south had survived the devastation. They never returned. Ann has chickens and a couple of cows and plenty of supplies from Mr and Mrs Klein’s store. She is used to farming and cooking and manages to survive in the valley that is fed by a brook, where the water has somehow avoided being radioactive. She has almost managed to come to terms with the fact that she will spend her life alone and will never speak to another human being. Then, one day, she sees a plume of smoke in the distance and before long she discovers the source:

“It is a man, one man alone… he is dressed, entirely covered, in a sort of a greenish plastic-looking suit. It even covers his head, and there is a glass mask for his eyes… The reason he is coming so slowly is that he is pulling a wagon, a thing about the size of a big trunk, mounted on two bicycle wheels… He stopped to rest every few minutes. He still has about a mile to go to reach the top. I have to decide what to do.”

Is this man going to be friend or foe?

There is a constant undercurrent of tension in Ann’s simply told story. Amidst the fascinating practical details of survival, is an absorbing cat and mouse tale of isolation and the burdens and choices involved in staying alive under dreadful circumstances.

If you have read and enjoyed any of the following, this is a must-read:

Alone by David Brazier

Boy X by Dan Smith

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

How to Look for a Lost Dog

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How to Look for a Lost Dog by Ann M. Martin

Book of the Week: 7 April 2019

Illustrator not credited

When you are looking for your lost dog you need a plan. You should draw radiating circles around your home town on a map, each one further away from the centre of your town. Then you telephone all the animal shelters within 15 miles, 30 miles and 60 miles to see if they have your pet. Rose is methodical and fond of rules, although not as interested in them as she is in prime numbers and homonyms, so this is her plan when her father lets their dog Rain out during Hurricane Susan and she doesn’t come home.

Rose’s father is finding life difficult since her mother left them alone. He resents what he sees as the interference of his brother Weldon in Rose’s upbringing and finds Rose’s fascination with homonyms tests his patience to its limit. When a hurricane strands them in their house and Rose is distraught about their missing pet, the situation gets to breaking point.

The inclusion of a dog and a central character who is autistic make the comparison with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time an obvious one, but this is a book for younger readers and is in a lighter vein. You might enjoy it if you liked Wonder by R.J. Palacio or The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd.

Warwickshire Book Award 2019

The winner of the Warwickshire Book Award was announced on Thursday 4 April as S.T.A.G.S. by M.A. Bennett. The Year 7 judges and I were lucky enough to hear all six shortlisted authors talk about their work at The Bridge House Theatre, Warwick. Now the judges have read the shortlist, all the books are available to borrow from the Tim Pigott-Smith Library if you are looking for reading ideas for the holidays. If anything you want to read is already on loan, remember that reserving books is absolutely free.