Survivor Diaries 4 – Dust Storm!

Dust Storm by Terry Lynn Johnson is the fourth Survivor Diaries book, a survival story for 9 year olds about two children lost in the New Mexico desert.

What happens

It starts somewhere safe, which is clever. Jen is at home with her grandparents and a plate of mini cream puffs, talking to a reporter who wants to know how she survived. So you know from page one that she gets out.

Then she takes you back. A geocaching trip, a van stuck in a rut on a dirt road, and Martin Diaz, who used to be her best friend and now won't speak to her. Jen catches him sneaking off with the cache coordinates. She grabs her bike and goes after him to prove it.

And then the sky behind them turns yellow.

The storm is the best writing in the book. Sand filling her mouth, grit burning her eyes, a broken tree trunk flying past her head, Martin appearing beside her and vanishing again like a ghost. She can't see the ground ahead of her at all. She rides straight off a cliff.

What's left is two children at the bottom of a dry gully with wrecked bikes, no water, no phone signal and a thunderstorm somewhere upstream that could flood the channel without warning.

The part I liked best is that they save themselves with things they've read. Martin had a desert book in the van and Jen read it over his shoulder (he told her to mind her own business), and the pages come back to them in bits. Panic kills. Get out of the arroyo. A gallon of water per person per day. Keep your mouth shut so your saliva stops evaporating.

They also bicker the entire way, blame each other loudly and nearly cry, which is a great deal more honest than two brave children being brave.

A word on how real the danger feels. Jen is bleeding from her nose and her ankle, picking cactus spines out of her sock, dizzy with thirst and properly frightened, and the book softens none of it. For some readers that's exactly the appeal. For a child who worries, it's a lot to sit with.

What to read next

If they want more, start at the beginning with the first one, Overboard. Same reporter, same phone on the coffee table, except this time it's a whale-watching boat in rough water and a boy who never reached the life rafts.