To Stay Alive by Skila Brown - ADVISABLE

Brown, Skila To Stay Alive, 304 pages.  Candlewick, OCTOBER 2016.  Violence: PG (references to off-page murder, cannibalism).

Mary Ann Graves and her family are headed to California for a new life.  First, however, they need to find a wagon train that will accept their late arrival and then they need to survive the journey.  Delays and bad choices plague the group and they find themselves stranded in the Rockies as winter shuts down all travel.

I am not usually a fan of what passes for books written in poetry nowadays, but Brown’s book is a cut above most of them.  She actually uses figurative language at times and doesn’t always write in complete sentences that have been artfully arranged to look like poetry.  I learned things about the Donner Party that I had not caught on to previously.

MS, HS – ADVISABLE.  Cindy, Library Teacher