Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Protagonist archetypes
Themes
Synopsis
Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not -- you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner. Only, if it's the last time you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus. But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran ... Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong. In this novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world -- as they know it -- apart.
Is Monument 14 appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 13 and up.
Teens face life-threatening disasters including chemical weapons and must survive without adult help in a superstore. Violence comes from environmental catastrophes and their aftermath rather than human conflict, with deaths implied but not graphically described.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, no sexual content, and mild language. Content notes include child harm, death, mass death, and grief (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Fourteen kids from different backgrounds must work together to survive when disasters strand them alone in a huge superstore with no adults.