Two Degrees by Alan Gratz
I am Thijs. I enjoy reading (maybe a little too much) and being outdoors. I have a younger brother and my favorite dessert is root beer floats.
Two Degrees is a historical fiction book about three young kids and how climate change has affected their lives and others. These three kids have to struggle to make it out of the natural disasters that happened due to the Earth’s rising temperature. So far, the Earth’s temperature as risen a whole Two Degrees. To make matters worse every year we burn more fossil fuels. All this pollution will turn into an economic disaster that some people have predicted will start during the year 2100 or sooner. If you want your kids and their kids to have a life with nature how we know it then we have to cut down almost all our usage of fossil fuel. This will be hard for everybody because we are used to a life with all we need at one little shop across the street. I found a funny joke a while back that said not only do I think that the economy is on its final legs but I also think that somebody just kicked it in the shins.
The first part of this book follows a Japanese American girl and her newly made friend running through Morris fire that sparked in the Californian Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Morris became the biggest mega fire in California at the time. A mega fire is when a forest fire burns a million acers of land. Alan Gratz leaves a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter so watch your clock to make sure you don’t stay up too long. Then the book moves all the way to Churchill, Canada and follows the journey of two boys once they are stranded over the Hudson Bay with a polar bear stalking them. Churchill is known widely for how many polar bears it has. Over the past few years, the great and mighty polar bears have gotten closer and closer to the town and people. Attacks have become more frequent as well. With all this the locals keep their houses and cars unlocked in the town in case someone needs to get away from one of these giant beasts. The last section of the book it tells the story of how a poor girl in Miami tries to survive the horrible Hurricane Rueben.
I thought this book was great. If you have read any of the other books that Alan has written and enjoyed it then I am sure you will like this one too. If you have never read one of his books before I would highly recommend them and this book. They have a wonderful collection of them at The Community Library. I hope you find this book as great as I did.
