Escape From Chernobyl (Escape From #1)
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"Nonstop action, real history, serious danger. You gotta read these books!" —Alan Gratz, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Refugee
26 April 1986
01:18
Alina & Lev are two siblings living in Pripyat, one of the Soviet Union's proud nuclear cities. Both are asleep in their beds.
Their cousin, Yuri, is a custodian at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where he's fiercely attacking a spill in the hallway with a mop.
Alina's best friend, Sofiya, sleeps just a few doors down. Her father is an engineer at the plant, a fact that has always filled her with pride.
In five minutes, Reactor No. 4 will explode in a ball of fire. It will expel radiation across their town for nine days before it's finally contained. For the people of Pripyat, it will be far too late.
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Two young siblings flee the Chernobyl disaster with their parents, but the Communist party is on their heels. Meanwhile, the friends and family they were forced to leave behind must contend with a disinformation campaign that's determined to pretend nothing is wrong-even as deadly radiation spills into the air.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alternating perspectives between three heroic young people living in Pripyat, Ukraine, Marino (the Plot to Kill Hitler series) puts a gripping fictional spin on the April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Sixteen-year-old Yuri Fomichev is a Soviet citizen interning at the plant while staying with his aunt and uncle. He's working the night shift when reactor four explodes, and he collaborates with others to salvage the situation and attempt a rescue. His cousin, 13-year-old Alina, who seems to have OCD, is whisked away from town with her brother; eventually, the two make their way back to look for their friends, fleeing at night back to Pripyat. And 15-year-old Sofiya Kozlov, Alina's outgoing best friend, is the daughter of one of the plant's nuclear engineers. When party officials downplay the explosion, Sofiya's father tells her the true magnitude of the danger, and she takes it upon herself to warn her neighbors. Highlighting eerie moments (a column of light from the destroyed reactor lances the night sky), the denial of science by political appointees, and the swift and deadly effects of radiation poisoning, Marino paints a vivid, if not always fully contextualized, picture of the catastrophe, its dangers, and a government willing to cover it all up. Ages 8–12.
