Earthquake shock

Finally Joey Flores' mother has stopped treating him like a little kid. He can stay at the skate park with his friends Fiona and Kevin, as long as Dylan, an older, obnoxious family friend, walks with him back to their apartment. But on the way home one day, an earthquake hits the city. Joey and Fiona escape a collapsing on-ramp thanks to Joey's quick response, but their friends are on the other side of the overpass. Joey stays calm, finds and rescues Dylan and Kevin, and navigates his way back home and to a shelter where he, his mom, and his baby sister await his dad's return. Full of action and realistic friend dynamics, the story moves briskly. First in a new series of disaster stories, this holds strong appeal for both girls and boys and features a diverse cast of characters. A rare find in transitional chapter books, this one also works for older, struggling readers thanks to its real-life survival element.--Harold, Suzanne Copyright 2010 Booklist

Joey Flores and his friends are walking home from a skate park when an earthquake tears through their Los Angeles neighborhood in this first title in Kennedy's Disaster Strikes series. Joey and Fiona are passing under a highway when the quake hits, and he drags her out of the collapsing underpass: "Crashing concrete columns chased them, like some awful monster ready to swallow them whole." Joey then pulls an antagonistic friend, Dylan, out from under concrete slabs just before an aftershock occurs. Kennedy pushes the super-boy idea to the limit as Joey then proceeds to whisk a small girl away from a downed power line seconds before she would have touched it. His aw-shucks musings on being heralded as a hero is also unconvincing: "Heroes were larger than life. He was just ten-year-old Joey." More believable is Joey's genuine fear for his family's wellbeing as he races home after the earthquake. Kennedy (The Dog Days of Charlotte Hayes) follows this slim, but eventful story with a roundup of earthquake facts. Tornado Alley pubs simultaneously. Ages 7-10. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From DISASTER STRIKES #1: EARTHQUAKE SHOCK All at once, Joey heard an earsplitting boom. A jolt knocked him forward and he stumbled off his board. He looked over at Fiona. She was still on her board, but she looked as if she'd felt the jolt, too. Had a car run into the wall behind them? As he turned to look, the sidewalk shifted under his feet. He tried to keep his balance, but the sidewalk began to roll like a fun-house floor. Joey heard an awful rumbling and the sound of cracking concrete, and suddenly he knew exactly what was happening. It was an earthquake. Joey had lived through several minor ones, but this one felt different. They had to get out from underneath the highway. Fiona had jumped off her board now, but she stood paralyzed. Joey grabbed her arm, yanking her. "You have to run," he shouted. "Now!" Her voice trembled. "I d-don't know if I c-can." "You have to!" Joey shouted as he dragged her forward. But it was near impossible to run with the ground rising and falling every which way. They both fell several times and had to keep dragging each other back up as small chunks of concrete and dust rained down from above. The sun, oblivious to the earthquake, was cheerfully beating down only a few feet away. "Just a few more feet," Joey screamed at Fiona. They lurched forward, holding hands. Crashing concrete columns chased them, like some awful monster ready to swallow them whole. "Ow!" Something hard and heavy slammed into Joey's shoulder. But they couldn't afford to stop moving. Excerpted from Disaster Strikes #1: Earthquake Shock by Marlane Kennedy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.