Madeline’s Letter Essay #3: [Book Title]

Recently I have read most of the book The Fallout, a 346 page realistic fiction book by Stephanie Bodeen. S.A. Bodeen grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She graduated from UW-River Falls with a degree in Secondary Ed., then joined the Peace Corps with her husband and went to Tanzania, East Africa. Her first picture book, Elizabeti’s Doll (written as Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen) was published in 1998, followed by six other picture books.Her first YA novel written as S.A. Bodeen, the award-winning The Compound, came out from Feiwel and Friends in 2008. The novel count is up to seven, with the eighth releasing in 2016. She has lived in eight states, two African countries, and an insular possession. Currently, she lives in the Midwest with her husband and two daughters.

The fallout is the second book in The Compound series. The compound is about a boy Eli who was living in a compound for years after a nuclear war. His twin brother, Eddy, was locked out. After years, their food supply began to become worse, running out of food, and having edible food. Eli figures out that there was no nuclear war after all and his dad still won’t let him out. His father turned out to be crazy locking his family in there for the heck of it. The Fallout is after they got out. They believe that there father is dead and they are trying to live there lives to the fullest while still trying to keep their identities a secret. After going out a few times,  Eli realizes that people on line are trying to find them. Some of them just people making up stories, when he finds one comment that they were spotted at Costco, which they did go to just the past week. The more he more he looks, the more he realizes that so many people know where they are. The rest of the story leads to what will happen to these “Stalkers”.

This book is most definitely a a ten out of ten. Both the books actually. The first book is really good all the way from the start. The second book is just as good and it may seem a little boring in the beginning, but keep reading it get a lot better as it goes on. In both books, the authors craft really sticks out. The author uses foreshadowing to give out the most secretive hints about the plot, but on every page is a new and surprising twist. The book gets better and better giving the reader a great book to read. The structure of this book is hard to explain. The author uses detailed description and phrases that gave me a perfect visualization of the setting in my head. There are so many good parts of the book, but the following really stuck out to me. “Stale broken pasta. Limp, nearly flavorless produce from the flagging hydroponics.” These few sentences used to describe the gross food eaten in the compound is a perfect example of the author using her unique writing craft to consrtuct this book. I would definitely recommend this book to any teenager or young adult. Even an adult because the plot is one that would intrigue.

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