I did not finish this one. I am 74 pages in and the storm has not yet come. There is so much background information on the landscape and the people. I'm more aware of the beauty of the sentences than I am about the character's lives. So if I don't care--I don't think the students will. Perhaps if this book had started with the storm and then flash-backed, I would have liked it better. ( )

Mira Banul is starting high school on her small island home after all the tourists have gone back across the bridge. Her best friends Deni and Eva settle into their usual routine along with the 14 other members of their class/grade level: outdoor classes, working on their FLOW projects, which is an independent study about some aspect of the sea, touring the bird sanctuary with their favorite teacher, Miss Isabel. Glorious time of year -- still summery Sept. but cooler and empty -- the best part. Then Shift shows up -- a new boy whom Eva is smitten with, and things begin to change. This is the initial tempestuous adolescent focus, but the bigger storm is Hurricane Sandy which comes just as suddenly with even greater disruption. While the islanders are typically stoic and don't scare easily, they were completely unprepared for this storm which wasn't "scheduled" to hit them. So the usual evacuations never happened, the shoring up of windows and supplies was neglected and the damage was unfathomable. Mira has the added challenge of a sweet younger brother, Jasper Lee, with a complicated chronic disease (Hunter syndrome). "knowing the names of things is one small defense against the sad facts of reality." (7) He and her mother, Mickey were on the mainland for a weekly treatment that encountered complications when the storm hit, so Mira is left to fend for herself in the storm and its aftermath. She is aided by "Old Carmen" the local beach-comber/homeless (?) woman who is a great survivalist and helps Mira when most of her house washes out and mainland aid (fresh water, medical supplies, food, viable shelter) is still days away. Beautifully written and beautifully presented with artistic fly-leafs and section designs, the author tackles death and destruction with a natural and hopeful eye. The storm both takes and brings -- unexpected results and consequences. There is a touching sense of community here and Mira and her friends take their teacher's words to heart: "Our responsibilities: to pay attention; to love the world; to live beyond ourselves." Great lesson in a subtle package. ( )

I really wanted to like this book. The language was lyrical, even poetic. But do teens really talk like this? I did like the mysterious connections that the storm revealed and the medical information I learned from the protagonist. ( )

I'm collecting clear-eyed yet hopeful books about climate change, and this is a fine example. A Hurricane-Sandy-like storm destroys the protagonist's tiny mid-Atlantic island home... but that doesn't happen until halfway through the book, and is packed all around with a lot of literary, lyrical writing that a teacher could use as a textbook on foreshadowing. Sometimes the literary-ness felt a bit over the top to me, and the resolution of the relationship mysteries was abrupt and soapy. But the book is lovely and atmospheric, and kept me turning pages, and deals with a subject that hasn't been written about enough yet. It reminded me most of Alice Hoffman's [b:Green Angel|410615|Green Angel (Green Angel, #1)|Alice Hoffman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389760023s/410615.jpg|4030676], which is literary magical realism about a 9/11-like disaster.

I would not give this to my middle schoolers -- not because of any "content," but because virtually every 8th grade reader I've ever known would say, "That was... weird and confusing." It prioritizes literary writing over plot or character, and the vast majority of middle schoolers are not on board with that yet. This may be a good choice for high school fans of [a:Jandy Nelson|2982266|Jandy Nelson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1429737179p2/2982266.jpg] or [a:Francesca Lia Block|9072|Francesca Lia Block|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1339015762p2/9072.jpg]. (Both of whom are quite different from each other and from Kephart, but share a romantic, lyrical quality in their writing.) ( )

On Haven, a six-mile long, half-mile-wide stretch of barrier island, Mira Banul and her Year-Rounder friends have proudly risen to every challenge. But when a superstorm defies all predictions and devastates the island, when it strands Mira’s mother and brother on the mainland and upends all logic, nothing will ever be as it was. A stranger appears in the wreck of Mira’s home. A friend obsessed with vanishing is gone. As the mysteries deepen, Mira must find the strength to carry on—to somehow hold her memories in place while learning to trust a radically reinvented future.