Trapped

This is a sad story: I am a terribly library patron. I have no idea when it was that I last checked books out of the town library, but it was probably springtime, and today I decided to finally return the books (most of which Elise and I never read) and pay my fines. 

Thirty dollars later, I balked at checkout when the librarian asked me whether I wanted to donate a holiday "gift" to the libary. I told him that I'd made my donation for the rest of the year, but nice try. 

This book, Trapped, by Michael Northrop, is one of the books I checked out today - the day that I've wholeheartedly decided that I am going to use the shit out of my library from now on. I started it in the children's library while Elise played with trains with any child who came her way (there were a lot of them) and then settled down with it in bed after she went to sleep. I read the book until I was done.

There is an amazing, satisfying pleasure that comes with reading a book in one sitting, if you ask me. Generally, books that I can read in one sitting, or in one day, have something special about them. Great characters, a good plot, action that keeps things moving along and a real desire to know what is going to happen in the end. This book had all of these things.

Trapped is about seven kids who get caught stranded in their high school during an incredible mammoth of a Nor'easter. I know what this means, this mondo-beyondo type of blizzard that can hit right here in Connecticut, where the events in this book also seem to take place. Nor'easter blizzards are a scary, intense whollop of snow and ice and wind that happen (badly) every few years or so. 

Anyway, seven teenagers are trapped. Snow starts piling up at an epic rate - it gets so that the kids have to hole themselves up in a second floor classroom with vats of peanut butter and bread to call their dinners, while the snow reaches ten, then fifteen, then eighteen feet high. 

The power has gone out. The pipes have frozen. The roof starts collapsing under the weight of the snow. No one knows the kids are there.

What would you do?

My rating: Four and a half out of five snowballs to the face. Just kidding, I really liked it. I could definitely see this being made into a movie, a la Day After Tomorrow, but with a lot less science involved. It was quick, exciting, and let my mind escape, which, man. It's so great when that happens.

(Have I mentioned how much I suck at reviewing books? At least I have finished one. I haven't been doing much finishing of books lately, although finishing of scarves for Christmas is a whole other story.)