Poet Freeman makes her middle grade debut with this engaging survival story in verse based on Island of the Blue Dolphins. When 12-year-old Maddie's plans for a secret sleepover fall through, she decides to stay at her grandparents' empty summer apartment solo, having already lied to her divorced parents about her whereabouts. An unexpected middle-of-the-night evacuation leaves Maddie completely alone in her small Colorado town, without power, information, or any way to communicate with loved ones. With only the neighbor's rottweiler as a companion, Maddie spends the next three years surviving on her own--gathering food from abandoned stores, navigating ever-changing and sometimes dangerous weather, and hiding from looters and wild dogs. Most of all, she must overcome the unending loneliness and uncertainty that each day brings. The lengths to which resourceful Maddie must go in order to survive feel realistic, and Freeman's well-paced verse magnifies significant and harrowing moments. The explanation of the "imminent danger" that left Maddie alone is vague and hasty, however--after readers follow a worthy protagonist through three years of solitude and despair, the abrupt resolution disappoints. Ages 10--up. Agent: Deborah Warren, East West Literary. (Jan.)

Maddie, 12, has the perfect plan to spend the night with her two best friends, away from parents and siblings, but when it falls through, Maddie takes advantage of the solitude. By the next day, however, everyone else is gone, evacuated ahead of an "imminent threat." While she waits to be rescued, Maddie uses her common sense and courage to figure out how to survive. Months and then years pass with her only company the neighbor's rottweiler, George. Maddie is finally resigned to living out her life alone when help finally arrives. Maddie's first-person narrative is expressed perfectly through Freeman's verses, in short passages and spare images. Especially striking is the personal growth Maddie experiences over time as she handles frightening situations: a band of looters, a tornado, and a severe injury. The novel is gripping, and the plot fast-paced, although the ambiguity around the evacuation and the "imminent threat" and its resolution frustratingly strains credulity. That aside, this is a tense, engrossing survival story on par with classics such as Hatchet.

Freeman's middle-grade debut starts with a wallop and carries on from there. Twelve-year-old Madeleine Albright Harrison is inadvertently left behind when her whole region is abruptly evacuated in the night. Although there had been hints of unrest, she has no real idea why everyone left or when--perhaps if--they'll ever come back. At first, there's still electricity and running water, but as days turn into weeks and then months, utilities fail, and Madeleine comes to realize that she's truly on her own. A Colorado winter will be coming soon enough. After rescuing a neighbor's dog, her only companion, she becomes increasingly sophisticated in her survival efforts, collecting food and water, learning how to light a fire in her father's woodstove and, bicycle helmet secured in place, teaching herself to drive a car. Not everything works. At one point she encounters but evades a vicious group of looters. Later she survives both a tornado and a wildfire that sweeps through her neighborhood. But it's loneliness that becomes her greatest enemy and books from the local library that ultimately sustain her. Madeleine relates her own riveting, immersive story in believable detail, her increasingly sophisticated thoughts, as years pass, sweeping down spare pages in thin lines of verse in this Hatchet for a new age. Characters default to White. Suspenseful, fast-paced, and brief enough to engage even reluctant readers. (Verse novel. 11-14) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.