“I am the most ancient teenager/on the planet.”
Maddie Harrison, a 12-year-old girl, plans a secret sleepover with her two best friends and no adults to enjoy the glory of being all alone. When a stomach bug throws a wrench in the plan, Maddie decides to go solo anyway… and then wakes up the next morning to discover everyone in her town mysteriously gone. Everyone… except for the neighbor’s Rottweiler named George, who Maddie adopts and becomes a critical companion.
“We’re ghosts, George./Ghosts in a twenty-first/century ghost town.”
Alone isn’t a book about what happened to everyone else – it’s about Maddie and how she navigates this new, empty world. In the early days, Maddie forages for food and supplies in other people’s houses and at the grocery store. She manages winter, but also a flash flood, a tornado, and even a fire all by herself. Her head is a constant swirl of worry: Will someone rescue her? If anyone else shows up, can she trust them? How can she manage being alone, with no one to confide in, confer with, unburden herself to?
Written in accessible free verse, the format provides an excellent vehicle for Maddie to be confessional: to share memories, dreams and petty annoyances, to tell us when—and how—she’s feeling sad, confident, or scared. Writing to herself, she processes her feelings and recovers from her darkest thoughts.
“I want a poetic friend to keep me company/explore alongside me/help me forage for food and fuel.”
One of Maddie’s most valuable resources is the town library. She ventures there to learn how to build a fire, but eventually reads fiction for solace (“I get Jane Eyre./We get each other./We get loneliness.”) and poetry for inspiration (“I’m officially in love/with Mary Oliver”). She is quite taken by the famous challenge in Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?”
As your students journey with Maddie through her terrifying and tender experiences, they’ll discover rich opportunities to discuss their thoughts, feelings, and suggestions for her. Maddie’s story also facilitates creative cross-curricular learning. (Although they’ll have to consult the contemporaneous sequel, Away, to find out what happens to everyone else.)
After three years alone, Maddie triumphantly answers Oliver’s question by posing her own variant, which might just inspire your student readers, too: “Could my life be any wilder?/Or more precious?”
