When I was fifteen-months old, my dad died in a plane crash. I was in the plane crash, too. So was my mom. My mom saved my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was winter, after sunset, when we crashed into a\u00a0heavily wooded\u00a0area in upstate New York.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The small plane was\u00a0torn apart as it crashed through the trees. The wings and tail section were ripped off and the rest of the plane landed upside down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My\u00a0mom kicked her way out of the wreckage.\u00a0 After she worked her way around the site to check on my dad and uncle, she\u00a0struggled into the back section to unbuckle me from the car seat which had kept me safe.<\/p>\n
Then, along with my uncle, she carried me through the woods, first pushing through undergrowth and then following power lines, until they reached a building with people who could help.<\/p>\n
When life shows you how fragile it can be, it shapes you as a person.<\/p>\n
This is what I explore in my newest book INTO THE RAPIDS<\/em>. It\u2019s a survival story, but it\u2019s also about how there\u2019s more to life than just survival.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s about 12-year-old Addy whose dad was killed in a flash flood accident when she was a baby. Since then, Addy\u2019s mom has raised her to SURVIVE, not to need anyone else. Addy\u2019s even about to prove how self-reliant next week at Survival Camp, where she\u2019ll be testing on survival skills that she\u2019s been gearing up for her entire life.\u00a0<\/p>\n Except then a flash flood sweeps through their tiny mountain town, wiping out a bridge and destroying the only road to get to Survival Camp. Suddenly, the only way to get there will require Addy to trust her classmate Caleb, who\u2019s one of the reasons Addy doesn\u2019t have friends in this town.<\/p>\n One of the things I wanted to explore in this book\u2026is how none of us can do it alone. I knew that Caleb was going to need Addy because he starts getting panic attacks from the flooding, and Addy had been helping her mom deal with panic attacks for years. And Addy was going to need Caleb because\u2026 well the thing is, I got partway through drafting this book, and realized that I didn\u2019t know WHAT Addy needed, other than to get to Survival Camp. Because she was already strong! And she was partly based on me and how I know in my bones how easily death can happen, and so my first instinct was that she was JUST FINE ALREADY\u2014THANK YOU VERY MUCH.<\/p>\n But books need their main character to grow and develop, so I was forced to take a hard look at Addy to see what she was missing, which meant also taking a hard look at myself. And I ended up uncovering parts of myself that I had subconsciously walled off.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n I discovered that sometimes when you\u2019ve been grown up always trying to survive, always trying to be self-reliant\u2026<\/p>\n You can miss out on playing.<\/p>\n You can miss out on connections.<\/p>\n You can miss out\u2026 on life.<\/p>\n I know many of us feel like we\u2019re in survival mode at the moment. For so many reasons and in so many directions at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, how do we both manage to survive AND make that leap from survival mode to being able to play and relax enough to trust others?<\/p>\n It requires recognizing the people in our lives that CAN be trusted.<\/p>\n It requires letting ourselves feel all the feelings that come with loss.<\/p>\n It requires understanding that some bad things will happen, no matter how hard we work.\u00a0<\/p>\n It requires having the faith in ourselves that no matter what happens, we\u2019ll find a way through.<\/p>\n And all of that requires huge amounts of courage.<\/p>\n Because there\u2019s NOTHING braver than facing the fact that our time on this earth is short and messy \u2014 and to STILL find the ability to laugh, to cry, and to live with abandon.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the beginning of the book, Addy thinks of herself as brave. She camps in the woods by herself. She wields an axe like it\u2019s an extension of her body. She has survived all of her K-6 elementary school with no friends. She knows death happens, and it doesn\u2019t scare her.<\/p>\n But as she and Caleb become friends, she starts to realize how much she\u2019s been missing. That maybe it\u2019s time to expand her courage and her world\u2013\u2013and leap directly into the rapids of life.<\/p>\n Ann Braden is also the author of\u00a0Opinions and Opossums<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Flight of the Puffin<\/em>. She writes books about kids trying to stand up for themselves even when things are tough. Her debut middle grade novel,\u00a0The Benefits of Being an Octopus<\/em>, was an NPR Best Book. Ann founded the Local Love Brigade, which sends love postcards to those who are facing hate. She also founded GunSenseVT, a grassroots group that helped pass landmark gun violence prevention legislation. Ann has been a middle school teacher, the co-host of the children\u2019s book podcast\u00a0Lifelines: Books That Bridge the Divide, and co-organizer of #KidsNeedMentors. Ann lives in southern Vermont with her husband, two children, and two insatiable cats.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was fifteen-months old, my dad died in a plane crash. I was in the plane crash, too. So was my mom. My mom saved my life.\u00a0 It was winter, after sunset, when we crashed into a\u00a0heavily wooded\u00a0area in upstate New York.\u00a0\u00a0 The small plane was\u00a0torn apart as it crashed through the trees. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}