THE BLIZZARD DISASTER
by Peg Kehret
On November 11, 1940, Janis Huff is reluctant to leave her Minnesota farmhouse for school because she fears that in her absence her father will shoot her beloved old horse, Pansy, who has become blind and can no longer work off the cost of her feed. Janis goes, but school is dismissed early because of a rapidly approaching snowstorm. She sets off for home in what soon becomes a raging blizzard, and ends up hopelessly lost. Meanwhile Mr. Huff has tried to round up his 40 head of cattle—the family’s livelihood—but can rescue only 15 before he has to return to the farmhouse, exhausted and nearly frozen. Other rescues efforts ensue; while all this is happening, two kids living in the 1990s decide to use an “Instant Commuter” to travel back through time to that fateful day, hoping for a firsthand report on the blizzard. They land on the Huff farm just as the blizzard reaches its full intensity, and their jaunt becomes a struggle for survival. The time-travel angle is sheer silliness, but Kehret admirably pulls several threads of suspense into a coherent whole; the blizzard becomes a magnificent star in this old-fashioned, surprisingly gripping tale. (Fiction. 8-12)