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A review by library_brandy
Fallout by Todd Strasser
4.0
Everyone in the neighborhood made fun of Scott's dad when he started building the bomb shelter. Sure, everyone knows the threat of the Russians, but it would be mutually assured destruction--so while the Russians COULD destroy the US, they definitely WOULDN'T.
Until the night they do. The October night when Scott's dad wakes him up and ushers the whole family into the bomb shelter--and then tries in vain to hold the door shut against the neighbors who are also trying to get in. The shelter was only stocked with enough food and supplies for two weeks for four people, but it suddenly needs to stretch to ten. With no clocks or watches, there's no sense of how long they've been down there, or how much longer they'll need to stay. Four kids and six adults, one of whom is nearly comatose from a head injury falling down the ladder into the shelter. In such close quarters, with little food and no privacy, tempers flare: fear, racism, despair, anger.
I kept waiting for this to resolve in some kind of misunderstanding of the circumstances, some sort of Donnie Darko plane-crashed-into-the-house thing, but ... no. This is the real deal. This is claustrophobic and stuffy in a visceral way. Bad things have actually, legitimately happened. I'd love to see what happens next, what the aftermath is like for Scott and the others. But that's a different story, one we don't get here and can only imagine at.
Will be passing this along to my middle-schoolers, possibly paired with SA Bodeen's The Compound.
Until the night they do. The October night when Scott's dad wakes him up and ushers the whole family into the bomb shelter--and then tries in vain to hold the door shut against the neighbors who are also trying to get in. The shelter was only stocked with enough food and supplies for two weeks for four people, but it suddenly needs to stretch to ten. With no clocks or watches, there's no sense of how long they've been down there, or how much longer they'll need to stay. Four kids and six adults, one of whom is nearly comatose from a head injury falling down the ladder into the shelter. In such close quarters, with little food and no privacy, tempers flare: fear, racism, despair, anger.
I kept waiting for this to resolve in some kind of misunderstanding of the circumstances, some sort of Donnie Darko plane-crashed-into-the-house thing, but ... no. This is the real deal. This is claustrophobic and stuffy in a visceral way. Bad things have actually, legitimately happened. I'd love to see what happens next, what the aftermath is like for Scott and the others. But that's a different story, one we don't get here and can only imagine at.
Will be passing this along to my middle-schoolers, possibly paired with SA Bodeen's The Compound.