Snowpocalypse 7 (Or So) Creates Blogging Opportunity

Yet another blizzard here in Minnesota this weekend, and for once it started on a Sunday instead of a Friday or Saturday. So now the kids are home today for a snow day, Alex is sick, and I'm still behind on my book blogging. This probably wouldn't be a surprise, but I do have a good excuse for the last week or so: I was subbing in the nurse's office at a local elementary school. And it was busy. So both my writing and my reading (not to mention my already sub-par housekeeping) have been neglected.

I wanted to write a few words about Robert C. O'Brien's Z For Zachariah, though. I had never heard of this book before Julia randomly brought it home from her school library. Julia is only 8, and her reading level is not as advanced as this book would require, but she must have read the back of it and gotten interested. She convinced her father to read some of it to her, and I'm fine with that as long as no nightmares ensue.

What surprised me most is that, while I had never heard of this book, it's the sort of book that I love. Interactions of people - one of whom is not at all stable - after an apocalyptic event? Right up my alley! At the beginning of the story, the 16 year old main character, Ann Burden, believes herself to be the last person left in the world. There's been a short but predictably brutal atomic war, killing off everyone else, but she's safe in the valley in which she lives; the way it is constructed keeps radiation from getting into it. There are plenty of supplies for her, and she's making do alone.

Then another person finds her and she has to decide how to interact with him. When she does, she soon discovers that his history is disturbing and he might be insane. So it's a survival story in more than one way.

It's kind of funny how much I loved this book; the only other book by Robert C. O'Brien I had previously heard of was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which every fourth grader in America apparently had to read in the 1980s. I don't remember particularly loving or hating that book and I was frankly surprised to find that O'Brien had written anything else. I guess working in a bookstore for two years and going to library school for a while some books still somehow elude you.

Anyway, this book isn't in our collection, but if we had room it is one that I would certainly add.