Review by Booklist Review
In this authentic survival adventure, Sarah, a 13-year-old scholarship student, leaves her preppy classmates on a weekend trip to the Everglades and takes off with Andy, 15, a kind local who offers her a brief guided tour in his airboat. After the boat sinks, they walk for three days through the swamp with little food and water fighting off mosquitoes, snakes, and alligators until, finally, helicopters rescue them. What comes through best here is not only the teens' courage and mutual support but also the realism of their fights and weaknesses, even in the small moments, as when he apologizes after he can't stop himself from guzzling all the Gatorade. Andy is white and ashamed that his dad flies the Confederate flag. Sarah, in turn, is ashamed when she loses it and calls Andy a backwoods redneck (she doesn't reveal that she is black until the very end). It's the identity questions as much as the taut rescue story that will resonate with readers.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-The Florida Everglades provides the setting for two barely acquainted teens to embark on a survival adventure. During a weekend field trip to an environmental center, Sarah, 13, meets Andy, 15, the camp manager's son. As a scholarship student new to Glades Academy, Sarah feels excluded by the "Barbies," her snooty designer-clad classmates. Feigning illness, she skips a scheduled outing and joins Andy for a daytrip into the wilderness. Packing few supplies, she hopes to shoot some photos with her father's treasured Leica camera and be back before her teacher realizes she is absent. Alligator and snake sightings portend danger lurking in the outwardly docile landscape, and Darwinian foreshadowing intensifies as Sarah takes the helm of the sputtering airboat, accidentally running over some ducklings. As the teens explore a remote island, their airboat sinks beyond saving. Options for rescue are few, so they slosh miles through knee-deep swamp, experiencing overexposure to sun, mosquito bites, and encounters with wildlife. Factual details about local flora and fauna make this more than just a survival story, creating an intimate portrait of the Everglades. The two help each other to overcome some specific fears, but heretofore unrevealed details about Sarah's African-American heritage and Andy's Confederate flag-toting father are unnecessary to the satisfying ending.-Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Sarah, a scholarship student who feels like an outcast at her new private school, distances herself from her classmates during a field trip to the Everglades, with near-disastrous results. Rorby suspensefully captures the otherworldly atmosphere of this singular setting; somewhat less successful is the forced-seeming social commentary. Nevertheless, it's an exciting read. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Thirteen-year-old Sarah's new classmates at Glades Academy don't welcome hershe's there on scholarship, and her mother works in the school cafeteria. On a field trip to the Everglades, Sarah seizes the chance to get away by sneaking off on an airboat ride through the saw-grass marsh with the guide's 15-year-old son, Andy, taking only her backpack, a camera and some mosquito spray. A stop at a remote fishing camp ends in disaster when the boat sinks, and they're stranded, surrounded by alligators and snakes, with half a bottle of Gatorade and a can of SPAM. Andy knows what they're up against, but Sarah refuses to believe that they must leave the tiny island to trudge the 10 miles back to land. Wildlife and vegetation are vividly described; Sarah's fear is palpable in scenes of near-disaster, and readers will cheer when she and Andy make it safely out of the swamp after five days. However, the first-person narrative is uneven, marred by gaps that make it hard to fully visualize some situations, and there are too few transitions to support some rather sudden instances of closeness between Sarah and Andy. Rorby cleverly offers only subtle hints that Sarah is African-American and Andy is white until late in the story, adding depth to this survival story framed within the story of an outsider. (Adventure. 12-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
