Aftershock

Amy’s last day of grade 10 at a Mission private school is the day an earthquake hits the Greater Vancouver area. The action opens with Amy and her friends, Peter and Sofie, assisting with the evacuation of the “little kids” from the collapsed music room. Amy waits for her father who is working downtown which is cut off from the girls’ homes in Mission due to the damage of the quake. For reasons not revealed to the reader, Amy’s half-sister Mara shows up. Mara discloses that her house has fallen into a ravine. The two walk to Amy’s house to find it uninhabitable. With emergency supplies gathered at Amy’s house, the sisters make the surprising decision to walk to downtown Vancouver in search of their father. They encounter aftershocks, rain, swollen rivers, dead bodies as well as some helpful individuals that assist the sisters in connecting with their respective mothers. The ending comes quickly focusing on the connection the girls have made during their traumatic adventure.

The action will keep the pages turning despite some unexplained moments in the plot and one-dimensional characters. As Amy’s mother is in Japan, readers might conclude Amy is of Asian descent. The girls find refuge in a Sikh temple and others that offer help along the way add diversity to the cast. Peter, Amy’s friend, has two mothers.

The abrupt ending might make for a good start to a creative writing assignment.

The strong adventure writing makes Aftershock a good addition to this genre and for schools and libraries looking for this type of book. According to the Orca website, “Orca Anchor” is “a new line of high-interest books at a low reading level (hi-lo) for teen readers. Written specifically for teens reading below a grade 2.0 level, the line of books will be printed in Orca’s Ultra-Readable format to be more appealing to a wider range of reading levels and abilities, including readers with dyslexia.”