Snow Struck

Nick Courage's Snow Struck is a disaster story for 10 year olds about three cousins, one very small dog and a blizzard that buries New York City.

What happens

It opens on 24 December with a starving hawk on top of an arch in Washington Square Park. The East River has frozen over. A million pigeons have vanished. Deer have walked across the Hudson from New Jersey looking for food. Somewhere under all that snow, a voice is shouting hello.

Then the book jumps back five days and makes you watch it happen.

Elizabeth and Matty have flown up from Florida to spend Christmas with their cousin Ashley. Neither of them has ever been further north than Savannah and both of them want snow. What they get, on 19 December, is the hottest winter day New York has ever recorded.

Their own house is still under a blue tarpaulin. A hurricane took the roof off months ago and the family has been living in a motel by the Waffle House ever since, boiling the tap water before they drink it.

Which is why Matty, who is younger and small for his age, now has every weather app going on his phone and checks them constantly. Elizabeth has promised him nothing bad will happen on this trip. He doesn't believe her.

That same afternoon, hail starts bouncing off the parked cars while they're all still in shorts.

The countdown is what makes this work. Every section carries a date and a time, so your reader always knows how little is left and can watch the children cheerfully making plans they are not going to get to keep.

A couple of things to be ready for. The first page is a hawk killing a gull, described closely, feathers and all. Ashley's parents have recently separated and Matty puts his foot in it about a minute after landing. And Matty's anxiety is the real thing rather than a quirk, which is either exactly what your reader needs or a bit close.

Elizabeth should have been starting her first year at secondary school before the hurricane wrecked it, and her voice sits about there.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who likes being frightened somewhere safe, try the Survivor Diaries book about an avalanche. A twelve-year-old girl is being interviewed about the day the mountain came down on her family, and she tells the reporter the avalanche wasn't even the worst part.