Alone

During bedtime read-alouds with my sons, they loved stories of survival. But almost all these stories we read together were about boys.

Alone was finally a survival story featuring a female main character, Maddie, a young girl left alone in a deserted town to fend for herself. To make it even better, it was written in verse, which is my preferred format for reading and writing. I also admired Freeman’s ability to make a story containing mainly one sole character—such a page turner.

Twelve-year-old Maddie makes one bad decision with terrible repercussions that sets this story in motion as she finds herself utterly and truly alone.

This is a story that the girls in my mother-daughter book group had much to say about. Her quest to survive in a world that has been transformed seemingly overnight forces Maddie to trust her instincts in order to survive on her own.

The story reads like a metaphor for the transition from child to adult. The themes of honesty, resilience, and optimism in the face of challenging circumstances are at the heart of this riveting story.

As a teacher of verse novel specific classes, I’m always looking for verse novels that take on new and interesting plots and settings. This is the very first dystopian verse novels I’ve read which makes it refreshing. Maddie wakes up alone in her town, everyone, except her neighbor’s dog, has taken a transport that she’s missed. She must survive on her own in this town, find food, water, heat, and fight against scavengers. Verse wise, I loved how her poetry advanced as she aged and read all the poetry books in her local, abandoned library. I had no idea how… show more.