Like the predecessor novel, this takes a look at how city kids would survive in a storm – this time a snow storm that hits New York City after a climatologically freakish warm streak.
Elizabeth and her little brother Matty visit their cousin Ashley in NYC for Christmas. Instead of snow pants, they end up wearing shorts – it’s super, uncharacteristically hot for NYC at this time of year. Global warming, for sure.
So when a cold front moves down, it hits all that wonderful warm air and sucks the energy right out of it, freezing the water into… a blizzard of epic proportions.
Of course, their dog – which normally never gets to go outside and smell all the wonderful things it wants to smell – chooses the eve of the blizzard to run off.
So now the kids, and a parent or two, blunder around in the snow, looking for a dog with absolutely no common doggie sense (it’s chasing a rat into the nether regions of NYC), amidst life-sucking cold.
Will they survive?
Actually, I didn’t feel anyone’s survival was ever really at risk. It’s pretty gentle middle grade, after all. But there’s a lot of tension, uncertainty and getting separated in the blizzard that makes this a real nail-biter right up to the end.
Enjoy!
