Wild Wave (The Wild Series)

Nick is visiting an animal sanctuary overlooking Cape Courage for a school assignment. The tour is led by Jess Hardy, a girl from Nick’s school. She loves her job, and the tour is fun and interesting. The animals start freaking out, the earth shakes and rolls, and the animals break free. Nick and Jess see the bay has emptied, and they realize a tsunami is coming.

They run for higher ground, into pine woods, and climb a huge fallen tree, barely escaping the wave. They try to walk out of the ruined woods and find an older couple whose boat was brought to the middle of the woods by the wave. The man is injured, the woman is running out of her medication, and it is up to the kids to walk out and find help.

Rodman Philbrick is a master of middle-grade survival novels. He puts believable young characters in seemingly impossible situations and challenges them to survive, throwing more and more obstacles in their way as they muddle through, learning as they go. The situations are things that could really happen, the dialogue is snappy and realistic, and the stakes are sky-high. Do not miss this book!