Storm
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A sixteen-year-old stowaway discovers her destiny on Noah’s ark in this riveting reimagining from award-winning author and “master storyteller” (SLJ) Donna Jo Napoli.
The rain starts suddenly, hard and fast. After days of downpour, her family lost, Sebah takes shelter in a tree, eating pine cones and the raw meat of animals that float by. With each passing day, her companion, a boy named Aban, grows weaker. When their tree is struck by lightning, Sebah is tempted just to die in the flames rather than succumb to a slow, watery death. Instead, she and Aban build a raft. What they find on the stormy seas is beyond imagining: a gigantic ark. But Sebah does not know what she’ll find on board, and Aban is too weak to leave their raft.
Themes of family, loss, and ultimately, survival and love make for a timeless story. Donna Jo Napoli has imagined a new protagonist to tell the story of Noah and his ark. As rain batters the earth, Noah, his family, and hordes of animals wait out the storm, ready to carry out their duty of repopulating the planet. Hidden belowdecks…is Sebah.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Napoli (Skin) draws from the story of Noah's Ark in this account of a Canaanite girl, Sebah, with a big problem: rain, which sweeps away her family, home, and the ground beneath her feet. Sebah and a boy named Aban climb a tree to survive, but soon they must abandon that refuge and set out on a raft across the ever-rising sea. That's when they see an enormous ark floating above them but only Sebah is strong enough to climb aboard. Despite the novel's biblical origins, it's light on religion. Sebah's prayers (to Ba'al) are rare, and she's more concerned with hiding from Noah's irritable family than with the Mighty Creator that gives Noah instructions. Sebah bonds more readily with the easygoing bonobos who let her share their cage than the humans twisting themselves into knots to follow the rules of a baffling God. Her own survival, always, is paramount. Napoli's focus on Sebah's immediate circumstances allows her to grow organically as a character, bringing a satisfying realism to this familiar story. Ages 14 up.
