After a meteor hits the moon and sets off a series of horrific climate changes, seventeen-year-old Alex Morales must take care of his sisters alone in the chaos of New York City.

Determined, after his mother's accidental death, to foil his stepfather's plans for his future, fourteen-year-old Jacob travels alone to Africa in search of his father, a biologist studying elephants in a remote area of Kenya.

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

In 1945 twelve-year-old Patrick and his younger brother Teddy stowaway on the U.S.S. Indianapolis in a desparate attempt to get back to the Philippines where they last saw their parents, just before the Japanese invasion--but when the ship is sunk they find themselves clinging to a piece of debris without food or water, and with hungry sharks circling below.

"World War II, October 21, 1942. A B-17 bomber drones high over the Pacific Ocean, sending a desperate SOS into the air. The crew is carrying America's greatest living war hero on a secret mission deep into the battle zone. But the plane is lost, burning through its final gallons of fuel. At 1:30 p.m., there is only one choice left: an emergency landing at sea. If the crew survives the impact, they will be left stranded without food or water hundreds...

Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies...

When their plane is shot down in a blizzard while transporting an important Taliban detainee, navigator Michael Parson and Army interpreter Sergeant Gold fight for survival in the harsh terrain of Afghanistan, where they struggle to outmaneuver terrorists and dubiously trustworthy villagers.

Describes such survival techniques as building a shelter, preparing edible plants, making fire, finding water, and many more.

A simple retelling of the tale in which an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a deserted island.