I had to figure out what my main character, Maddie, would do about cleaning and cooking and flushing the toilet when the power goes out and there is no running water. I talked to an expert who works at a water conservancy district and learned that if an entire power grid shut down, it would also impact the ability to have running water and indoor plumbing, since water management systems depend on electricity to operate. I had to learn what would happen in a town if all the power went out and how it would affect things like heating and cooling and running water. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and it became the seed that grew into ALONE.Ĭould you share with readers how you conducted your research or share a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching? In the discussion afterward, we talked about how challenging it was for Karana to survive on the island alone, and I started thinking about what it would be like for a contemporary middle school student to find themselves in a similar situation. When my daughter was in fifth grade, we were in a mother-daughter book club and we read Island of the Blue Dolphins. Can Maddie’s stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life? But Maddie’s most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten.Īs months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read.

With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. She’s alone-left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, Alone is a harrowing middle grade novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet that tells the story of a young girl who wakes up one day to find herself utterly alone in her small Colorado town. The novel is gripping and the plot fast-paced…This is a tense, engrossing survival story on par with classics such as Hatchet. 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. Suspenseful, fast-paced, and brief enough to engage even reluctant readers. This exciting story of tenacity, determination, and ingenuity is hard to put down, and thank heavens nothing happens to the dog. Form / genre: middle grade verse novel survival story

Synopsis of alone megan e freeman