100 books like The Disaster Days

This is one of the scarier disaster novels I’ve read, targeted at young adults rather than middle-grade readers.

People die in frighteningly believable ways in this story about a severe water shortage in California. I live in a semi-arid region that has been experiencing more frequent droughts in the last few years, so this novel’s premise felt plausible: the taps are literally turned off.

As well, the various characters’ reactions to the crisis reflected people I know, from preppers to climate changer deniers to those who dig deep and find kindness no matter how bad things get.

I confess, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this novel. I began reading it primarily to see what was percolating in slightly younger middle grade titles and in particular in books that are rooted in stories about differently-abled characters. Was I ever delightfully surprised when I fell in love with Ellie! I thought the novel was going to be about a lot of mean treatment by kids at school, but in truth, there wasn’t nearly as much of that as I expected (which was an enormous relief!). If you’re thinking, wait, I thought this was going to be a novel about survival, I’m here to tell you that every single day in Ellie’s life is its own survival story.

Surviving being left out of nearly all the activities the rest of the kids find fun; surviving the humiliation of having an aide take her from class to class,… show more.

This is one of the first young adult books I remember reading as an adult. I read it in college when I was preparing to become a teacher, and then I read it to my students once I was in the classroom.

I love the survival aspect of the story and Brian’s perseverance to push through after his plane crashes in the wilderness of snowy northern Canada. I also love that this book features a younger teen, which we don’t often see in YA books.

The story kept me fully engaged and I was rooting for Brian the whole time.

I love the way A Long Walk to Water follows two characters in two different timelines to reinforce the importance of water to survival. It’s an exciting combination of a true story and fictionalized one that intersect in an unexpected but wonderful way. Readers of any age, but especially younger ones, will be shocked by what one 11-year-old girl must do to obtain just a minimal daily amount of water for her family’s survival. They will also be inspired by how one 11-year-old boy, after barely surviving wartime experiences in his African homeland, returns years later to make a lasting impact on the lives of others. The double-pronged impact of these characters and their suspenseful stories will instantly engage readers, keep them enthralled to the final page, and leave a long-lasting impression.

This is more than a story, although it is a wonderful one. It is an eye-opener to the… show more.

This book captured me from start to finish. Like my book, this story is told in a gripping journal format. A meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and this causes catastrophic consequences on earth. Summer turns to a bitterly cold winter and Miranda and her two brothers and mother must figure out how they will survive in such harsh conditions. Having enough food to survive is a constant concern. This book helps us realize that when things get really awful, all that matters is food, water, staying warm, and remaining together as a family. All other concerns fall away. 

When I was young, I read Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. Published in 1961, it captured the love of nature and adventure that I experienced growing up. But as usual, the protagonist was a boy.

Echo Mountain has similar touchstones, but it is the book I wish I could have read when I was 13. The novel ticks all the survival story boxes for me: it features a feisty, independent girl hero, practical tips about wilderness survival, and realistic problems she must solve, sometimes defying cautious adult advice.

I’ve read post-apocalyptic novels for adults, but I know that children have even more reason for anxiety about potential present-day disasters.

96 Miles is a survival novel for readers aged 9-12 that appealed to me because the disaster is a believable, wide-scale power outage. The setting is identifiably now, and it takes place on a lonely road in the desert in Nevada.

The book is a page-turner, but there’s also a sense of hope that kept me reading. The four children pool their resources: food, water, knowledge, and maybe most importantly, emotional support. Their teamwork and a few practical survival skills keep them going when many adults would have given up.

I found this book by chance and wanted to read it because the premise is similar to one of my projects. The Wild is a murder mystery set at a camp for juvenile delinquents. This story takes place in the Pacific Northwest, which was a big bonus for me as it’s one of my favorite places on Earth.

I liked the author’s unique and snappy writing style and the fast pacing of the book. It kept me turning pages, especially once the first murder occurred. Overall, this book was a lot of fun to read.

I chose Outage by Ellisa Barr because it came from a unique viewpoint with regards to an attack that brings down an electrical grid; namely, a young person’s perspective. While other novels about grid attacks primarily have adults as a protagonist, Outage tackles the topic from a younger person’s frame of reference, along with all the unique adolescent problems that come with it. 

And while the temptation would be for the main character, an adolescent girl, to become a courageous and seasoned adult overnight, the author wisely takes her time and sets us on a journey of a slower evolution. While not containing any revelatory information about what elements of a society beset with no electricity would have to endure, I still liked this book as it reminded me to not always see things from my adult perspective. 

I know the concept of a sasquatch attack on a remote commune sounds silly on the surface, but Brooks crafts it into a realistic, serious story. As a believer in the possibility of Bigfoot, I was fascinated to see how disastrously an encounter between humans and cryptids could conceivably go.

The naivete of the settlers in the wilderness is even more distressing than the hostility of the animals. Unsettling news reports (of which the characters remain unaware) interspersed with diary entries underscore their desperation and peril. I thought the situation was completely credible. Really, we ought to have more sasquatch horror books.