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Summary
Summary
Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.
" Frighteningly real ." -- The New York Times Book Review
In Emmy Laybourne's action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside.
While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world--as they know it--apart.
Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not--you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it's the last time you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.
Praise for Monument 14 :
"A combination survival and apocalyptic story." -- VOYA
"A real thriller." -- Booklist
"Laybourne's debut ably turns what could have been yet another postapocalyptic YA novel into a tense, claustrophobic, and fast-paced thriller." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review
"Intriguing beyond the survival elements." -- Horn Book
"Readers will eagerly await the second volume. " -- Kirkus Reviews
"Concise, clear, and riveting. A cliff-hanger ending leaves readers devastated but breathlessly awaiting the sequel. A stellar addition to any collection." -- School Library Journal
"Laybourne's strong characterizations of the resourceful, optimistic children who make up this improvised family intensify the horror of the situation and make the almost cartoonish series of catastrophes frighteningly real." -- The New York Times Book Review
By Emmy Laybourne:
The Monument 14 Trilogy
Monument 14 (Book 1)
Monument 14: Sky on Fire (Book 2)
Monument 14: Savage Drift (Book 3)
Sweet
The Berserker series
Berserker (Book 1)
Ransacker (Book 2)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Actress/screenwriter Laybourne's debut ably turns what could have been yet another postapocalyptic YA novel into a tense, claustrophobic, and fast-paced thriller. In the not-too-distant future, a sudden hailstorm-just one small part of a massive environmental cataclysm-forces 14 Colorado students on their way to school to take refuge in a superstore. Cut off from the previously ubiquitous Network (with only one old TV as an occasional information source), they must cope with the standard personality conflicts and also a biochemical weapon leak that causes behavioral shifts in some of the kids. Bookish Dean narrates, observing his own jealousies and concerns, as well as the way the popular kids-like football players Jake and Brayden, and diving champ Astrid-are forced to question their place in the new social order. Although violence (including a sexual assault) is pervasive, it's rarely graphic and never gratuitous. Laybourne successfully develops a large cast of characters of assorted ages, and if the ending seems designed to tease a sequel, the story still stands well on its own. Ages 13-up. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Thompson Agency. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
First comes a devastating hailstorm -- enormous balls of ice and debris pelting a pair of school buses two brothers are riding. The high school bus crashes, killing many on board, but Dean and a few others get aboard the younger children's bus, which a savvy driver has driven straight into a superstore (think Walmart or Target) and relative safety. The driver leaves to look for help, but before she can return, there is an earthquake. Finally comes a chemical spill that poisons the air and causes a large segment of the population to go crazy with rage. Take Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It (rev. 11/06) and add a premise in which the kids get to live in a store with abundant resources, free from adult supervision, and you have the ingredients of this fast-paced teen dystopian novel. A rather formulaic premise gradually unfolds to become intriguing beyond the survival elements, as the characters must deal with choices about leadership, bullying, sex, and living with the temptations of alcohol and pharmaceuticals. Dean must also deal with the shame of having attacked his younger brother and others after coming in contact with the personality-altering chemicals. Initially, Laybourne focuses more on the disaster-building than on the characters, but she later deepens the characterization and includes some touching scenes before bringing it all to an exciting conclusion. susan dove lempke (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
It's an unforgettable opener: a school bus is trucking along when a hailstorm begins tapping against the roof and then pounding, and then denting, and then tearing it apart. The bus crashes into a local superstore and the 14 survivors, kids of all ages, seal off the opening. A TV in the electronics department relays the increasingly bad news: a volcano eruption set off a megatsunami, which created supercell storms, one of which destroyed a NORAD facility, which released an 800-mile-wide cloud of experimental toxins into the air. The kids learn the hard way that individual reactions to exposure depend on blood type: Os become murderous, ABs hallucinate, and so on. Dean, 16, and the older kids are forced to create a workable society, one tested at every turn by dangerous drifters, internal power struggles, and raging hormones. Following the initial shock, there are few scares; Laybourne is more concerned with weaving a realistic, multicharacter survival story. It's a bit quiet a times, though the ending is a real thriller. Sounds like a sequel storm is brewing.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
EVEN in an economic downturn, who isn't still wooed by the material Mecca of a superstore, whether it's to goggle at the luxury goods or merely to sample the high-fat comfort fare of the food court? Holly Golightly's assertion that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's resonates because it seems instinctively true. Shimmering ladders of gold chains, polished rows of perfect produce or neat rainbow stacks of cotton T-shirts can provide a sense of well-ordered security often lacking in the outside world. Two chilling postapocalyptic novels, "Monument 14" and "No Safety in Numbers," both debuts, play with this collective sense of safety in retail therapy, suggesting that something darker may lie beneath the pretty surfaces. In "Monument 14," by Emmy Laybourne, a comedian and actress, the consumer refuge is a fictitious Greenway store in Monument, Colo. Set in 2024, the story unfolds in a world where all students have tablet computers that run on an über-reliable national network; its collapse is the first sign something is awry since, as we learn, "the Network had never, ever gone down." After surviving a horrific morning school bus crash caused by a freak hailstorm, Dean Glieder, a high school junior who is the book's narrator, and 13 other surviving children find themselves in a state of profound shock, forced to organize a makeshift community within Greenway's Walmart-like walls. Once inside, they learn via television that a Canary Island volcano set off a tsunami that has taken out the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The eruption also initiated intense storms that have pummeled the rest of the country. And, in short order, the devastation is followed by an 8.2 earthquake, which compromises the seals of Monument's chemical-weapon storage facility. This causes the release of deadly poisons that, depending on blood type, leave victims paranoid, violent, sterile or dead. Whoa. While shopping therapy cannot possibly assuage the grim aftershocks of the accumulated disaster, the older teenagers among the group quickly realize their incredible luck in landing in Greenway - especially after they realize they have enough resources to live on for almost two years as long as they ration and allow no one else inside. Yet when they discover that the escaped contaminants can be passed not only through air but also through running water, their refuge threatens to become their final resting place. Laybourne's strong characterizations of the resourceful, optimistic children who make up this improvised family intensify the horror of the situation and make the almost cartobnish series of catastrophes frighteningly real. After last year's deadly events in Japan, the novel's rapidly amassing disasters seem disturbingly plausible. Unlike the sanctuary of the Greenway in "Monument 14," the mall at the center of Dayna Lorentz's "No Safety in Numbers" is the target of a biological terrorist When a bomb releasing a deadly flu virus is discovered inside the ventilation system of the Shops at Stonecliff, the Westchester megamall is quickly locked down to keep the potentially infected shoppers from contaminating the greater New York area. The ensuing life-or-death crisis unfolds for four teenagers from different levels of the high school hierarchy: working-class Marco; Lexi the computer whiz; the football rookie Ryan; and Shay, an actress. While Lorentz's attempt to diversify the young adult character pool is laudable (Marco's grandparents are Costa Rican, Lexi is African-American, Shay says her classmates see her as "the Indian chick"), her profiles lean more toward tell than show, and the third-person narration lacks the nuance and first-person intensity of "Monument 14." Nevertheless, her detailed depiction of the escalating chaos over the course of seven long days is deeply unsettling. When the dire extent of the situation is finally revealed, it leads to group panic, mob violence and worse. As the teenagers' increasingly desperate attempts to escape the marbled halls of plenty make clear, once personal choice is taken away, the notion that the mall is anything but a prison is shown to be little more than a carefully constructed fantasy. What we're really buying when we scoop up that hot toy, trendy shoe or carton of organic milk, both authors seem to suggest, is not the purchase itself, but what that coveted object represents: a sense of identity, a feeling of community, the illusion of safety. Surrounded by coffee-table art books, fancy watches and slick cellphones, it's easy to feel that the monsters will be kept at bay. As the tightly bonded teenagers quickly learn in these two riveting disaster novels, it is not our perfectly maintained belongings that will save us, but our messy, rewarding relationships. Deadly poisons leave victims paranoid, violent, sterile or dead. Whoa. Jennifer Hubert Swan is the middle-school librarian at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School She blogs at Reading Rants.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Take your everyday apocalyptic story, put some high school and middle school students and kindergarteners together on a bus, hurtle them into a giant supermarket, sprinkle a contamination epidemic, and you get Laybourne's thriller (Feiwel & Friends, 2012). Sophomore outcast Dean narrates the ordeal as he struggles to look out for his brother, keep an eye on his crush, and keep order as major issues arise (contaminated air and water, murderers on the outside, lice). What makes this different from other doomsday titles is its ability to create a solid family amongst the different ages of characters that all look out for the youngest of survivors. Each of the discs begins and ends with an eerie instrumental piece, while Todd Haberkorn's careful narration shows limited emotion as the harrowing events unfold. A few sexual situations and carnage descriptions make this appropriate for slightly older teens. The audio ends abruptly with a cliff-hanger, hinting at a sequel. Fans of Susan Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It (Harcourt, 2006) or Ashfall (Tanglewood, 2011) by Mike Mullin will enjoy Laybourne's debut novel. Purchase where demand for dystopian fiction is high.-Amanda Schiavulli Finger Lakes Library System, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.