Megan E. Freeman

Alone is written in verse and gives its twelve-year-old narrator an evacuated Colorado town, a grandparents' RV she was hiding in when everyone left, and a rottweiler.

The emergency is never fully explained, which is deliberate: Maddie only knows what a child alone could find out. Freeman was a teacher for years and the verse form keeps the pages turning for readers who would stall on prose.

The survival detail is practical, and the loneliness is handled without ever being softened.