The Raft

Gr 6 Up–Step aside Karana (Island of the Blue Dolphins)–teen fiction has a new castaway heroine. Robie loves traveling from the Midway Atoll where she lives with her parents, both researchers, to visit her aunt in Honolulu. She’s taken the trip by cargo plane many times by herself, but when a storm hits mid-flight, Robie has to bail out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. With the storm still pouring water over them, the plane’s copilot, Max, inflates the emergency raft and drags Robie to safety. On the raft with a man she doesn’t know, over hundreds of miles of ocean, her problems really begin. Survival means patching up the leaking raft, staying hydrated, and avoiding the tiger shark that’s following her. Eventually she must face the reality that rescue may not be coming. After days and days of torture on the open water, she washes up on the beach of an uninhabited island. Is this island her salvation or her final resting place? Fast-paced and intense, Robie’s story has a tight grip on readers up to the very last page. What will stick with them are the choices Robie makes amid her grim reality and her determination to stay alive. There is nothing like losing everything to make you appreciate what you have, like parents who love you and clean drinking water. This book will satisfy anyone who likes a good survival story.–Richelle Roth, Boone County Public Library, KY