Review by Ian Keogh

The I Survived series places fictional children at the centre of real life incidents, in this case in Glacier National Park in Montana, where in 1967 a spate of bear attacks on campers occurred. Despite the bear being a fearsome creature to be respected, it generally avoids humans, but as the notes in the back of the book explain, in this case they were attracted to the waste littered by both campers and lodges.

Mel and her younger brother Kevin are having a woodland lodge holiday with their grandfather, and as always Georgia Ball adapting from the novels of Lauren Tarshis ensures they’re characters to care about. Unlike other incidents in the series, the attack of the grizzlies is a relatively compact experience, akin to an earlier story about shark attacks, so more time is spent on constructing the personal circumstances and Mel’s state of mind. Camping in Glacier National Park is an annual family tradition, except in 1967 it’s the summer after Mel’s mother died, and the time taken off work afterwards by her father means he’s also absent. Mel’s carrying extra guilt because the crash that killed her mother occurred after she’d pleaded with her mother to drive her to a friend’s house for a sleepover following a snowstorm.

Tarshis takes time to mention the other wild creatures inhabiting the park, and the value of respecting their habitats, and explains how Mel has seen a grizzly bear before the encounter starting the book, except that one had died.

Berat Pekmezci is a matter of fact cartoonist who keeps everything simple, yet there’s nothing necessary lacking. The people are expressive, the animals are drawn naturalistically, and when they become threatening it’s conveyed in way that won’t give younger readers nightmares.

That’s not the case for Kevin, who’s young enough to relish a first meeting with a live bear that scares everyone else. Other characters are introduced before the crisis point in order to explain more about a grizzly bear’s habits and to prolong the suspense about the danger Mel’s in during the flash forward that opens the story. As the title shouts from the start, the children providing the focus in Tarshis’ books survive, but the penultimate sequence relates the tragedy of what else happened on the night Mel survived.

This is another engrossing entry in a good series, and Tarshis takes on 2005’s Hurricane Katrina next.