Jungle Knowledge Warrior! Lost! (Survivor's Diaries) by Terry Lynn Johnson

"Tell me, Carter. How did you survive being lost in the rainforest?" the reporter asked.

Did you talk with Anna?" I asked.

"I'll be meeting with her tomorrow." he said. "I want your version of what happened in Costa Rica for the Survivor Diaries I'm writing. About kids like you making it out of life-threatening situations."

Carter doesn't want to tell the reporter how scared he was. He has always been fearful and even subject to panic attacks. But he had no inkling how truly frightening his walk down a well-trodden visitor's trail with Anna was going to be. Carter was traveling with his parents, staying in a resort community in the rainforest, and his dad thought he should find someone his age to hang out with. But Anna was taller, a year older, and a lot bolder, and Carter was determined not to give her any chance to call him a baby. So when she suggested following a path off the trail to see the waterfall and statue of the monkey-witch, he hesitated.

I peered into the branches and imagined all the horrible things that could go wrong. I was shaking my head to refuse, when I saw it--the resplendent quetzal bird.

That's the rare bird Carter had hoped would be number 308 in his birder list, and he agrees to follow Anna down the path as the bird flies that way. The foliage gets thicker and darker, but the two reach the statue, which Anna shames him into the traditional licking for good luck.

That's when I noticed how dark it was getting. Anna seemed to notice at the same time. "We should head back." she said.

Just as we turned we heard a terrifying noise. It sounded like a lion's roar or a grizzly about to charge.

Suddenly the canopy of foliage above them exploded in dreadful howls and dark hairy bodies. It's a troop of howler monkeys and even Anna screams and dashes into the bush and Carter has to follow.

And soon Carter's worst fears become true. They discover that they are hopelessly lost in the jungle.

At first Carter staves off panic as he pulls out the emergency kit he always keeps with him, but one of the marauding monkeys scampers down and seizes it, leaving nothing but a plastic bag behind. The two are really lost and realize that they are going to have to save themselves with a plastic bag and what they've got in their heads.

Luckily, Carter is a factoid freak, a collector of random information, in Terry Lynn Johnson's third book in the Survivor's Diary series, Lost! (Survivor Diaries) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), and with Anna's athletic strength and Carter's knowledge, they pool their abilities and work together on their survival strategy.

"You're the one who knows all the stuff to get through the jungle. You're like a knowledge warrior," Anna said.

Being prepared for emergencies usually requires having the right stuff--equipment and supplies-- but also the right stuff in the mind--knowledge and spirit, the theme of author Johnson's survival stories for middle readers. Johnson offers both advice in keeping cool and in her author's note the contents of the Canadian Red Cross Survival Kit, as well as a list of helpful websites for emergency preparedness. Close calls and courageous actions ensue and the two manage to save each other several times in this cliff-hanger survival story.

Other books in this series are Overboard! (Survivor Diaries) and Avalanche! (Survivor Diaries) (see reviews here).

True Grit! Avalanche! (Survivor Diaries) by Terry Lynn Johnson

We heard a muffled whump. We both froze and looked at each other. With growing horror, I saw the snow around us break away.

"Avalanche!" I screamed.

A big noise, like thunder, boomed. I felt the rumble. I glanced behind just in time to see the wall of snow begin to envelop me. Choking snow everywhere.

But Ashley's avalanche training kicks in as the snow buries her. She cups one hand over her nose to form an air pocket and sticks the other straight up. And when the avalanche stops, she realizes that she feels the cold wind on that arm. Breathing slowly, she claws her way up, getting her head above the snow, and fighting her way on top of the snow.

I stared at the hole I had just been in. That was almost my grave.

Ashley looks around for her twin brother, the one who always takes the lead, the one who beats her at everything. Surely Ryan was able to ski to the outside of the sliding snowfield.

There is an eerie quiet. She can't see her twin anywhere. But then Ashley sees Ryan's ski pole sticking out of the snow. Pain seers through her knee as she tries to crawl toward the pole.

My brother was buried under the snow!

Frantically Ashley digs through the snow and pulls Ryan out into the air. He's alive, with a huge bump on his head. But they are both alive.

"What do we do now?" I asked my brother.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Suddenly Ashley realizes that Ryan is too dazed to take charge the way he always does. If they are going to survive a night on the slope and find their way back to the trail, it's going to be up to her.

And Ashley knows what she has to do. She has to build a snowcave to keep them alive through the night and in the morning find a way to drag Ryan to the trail so that they can be rescued. She fashions a makeshift sled and struggles to roll Ryan onto it.

Sweat ran down my face, pooled in my shirt where the rope cut in into my waist. Keep going. Must not stop. Hot stabbing pulses ripped down my leg. Had to keep going. Our lives depended on it.

And it's going to take more strength than she ever knew she had in Terry Lynn Johnson's second book in the Survivor Diaries series, Avalanche! (Survivor Diaries) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), in which her heroine steps up to take the lead, drawing on the training and skills from her parents and instructors to know what to do. But saving herself and Ryan takes more than just Ashley's knowledge. It takes determination and perseverance, the ability to endure pain and keep going. Johnson's survival story is a real page-turner for young chapter-book readers which celebrates the love of siblings and the gritty character of a girl who learns that she has what it takes.

Author Johnson, herself an expert in dog sledding, skiing, and mountain rescue, tells an absorbing adventure story, even appending a section on Avalanche and Wilderness Survival and even the first chapter of her next Survivor Diary tile, Lost! (Survivor Diaries), forthcoming in 2018.

What It Takes to Make It! Survivor Diaries: Overboard! by Terry Lynn Johnson

The boat swayed beneath me. I spread my feet apart to balance and lifted my face into the wind. It was awesome.

"Put this on, Trav." Mom ambushed me with a red and black suit and held it open for me to step into like I was five.

"What? No. What is that?"

"An immersion suit. It's going to be chilly on the water."

"Stacey's not wearing one!" I protested. "Older and wiser," my sister smirked, still texting.

I let Mom do up the zipper. Since my gym accident, Mom had been hovering. "And I hid some animal crackers in the pocket in case you want a snack."

"Mom!" said Stacey. "The last thing Chunky Monkey needs is a snack."

Travis's mom has been all over him like that immersion suit since he had a serious fall from the high bars in gymnastics. But he has to admit that his sister's teasing about his weight gain during his recovery is on target, Still, Trav stubbornly insists on staying on deck with the other tourists when his parents go inside the warm windowed cabin.

It's just an average tourist boat heading out on the ubiquitous whale watch cruise. What could happen?

A lot. A rogue wave capsizes the boat and dumps Travis into the icy waters of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. In the chaotic scene his sister and parents are nowhere in sight, as everyone, despite their life jackets, struggles to stay upright in the wild waters. Nearest to him is Marina, the daughter of the boat's captain. Marina had been assisting her dad in the run-through of the required safety speech when the wave hit, and now she takes over, telling Trav what to do. She's, like, the world's authority on survival at sea. It's like being shipwrecked with Stacey.

But these two unlikely partners turn out to be a lucky pairing for survival. Marina knows a lot about the dangers of cold water immersion and the dangers of hypothermia.

"We have about an hour," Marina gasps. "Our arms are going to stop working. Then we'll probably lose consciousness. Maybe we have more than an hour since we're wearing lots of layers. You'll last longer than me with that suit. And body fat insulates, too." she adds.

Marina's dismal message is that they have less than an hour to save themselves, even if they assume a fetal position and huddle together to conserve body heat, a position that's almost impossible to maintain since they have to struggle just to keep their heads above water and breathe. Marina knows a lot, but she is not much help with a injured arm.

Travis, on the other hand, has gymnastics training and an immersion suit. And after all, when else will being a flexible chunky monkey come in handy?

And it turns out that Trav and Marina have the right stuff, right down to those animal crackers in his pocket and the fire-starting kit Marina has in hers, in Terry Lynn Johnson's forthcoming Overboard! (Survivor Diaries) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

Johnson builds plenty of suspense as her unlikely hero fights to save himself--and Marina, who turns out to be prepared with the one weird factoid that gets them rescued. For hot summer afternoons, this one is both a chill thriller and a quick and guaranteed riveting choice for middle readers. especially reluctant ones, and is the first in a proposed series of short survival stories. (Coming next: Avalanche! (Survivor Diaries, just in time with life-saving skills for ski season.) Appended is an author's note which adds more Coast Guard-approved information about survival in frigid waters.