From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-The year is 1927. After months of rain, the Mississippi River is flooding. The water is almost up to the doors of the houses in which Molly Bride and Garrett Wood live. Molly, who is black, and Garrett, who is white, have been saving every stray nickel or penny they earn for great plans when they get older and have hidden the money deep in the bayou. When the flood threatens to wash it away, the children get on their homemade raft to pole over to save it. Unfortunately, the raft is pulled into the flood's current, and they are in for a wild and dangerous ride. Although the story starts out slowly, once the two friends are swept away, it becomes a real page-turner. Every chapter contains a life-threatening struggle. Molly's fight with a cottonmouth is particularly gripping. This would make a great booktalk, particularly when paired with Patricia Lauber's Flood: Wrestling with the Mississippi (National Geographic, 1996), a nonfiction title that's also about the 1927 flood.Elaine Lesh Morgan, Multnomah County Library, Portland, ORCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Card catalog description
When the raging Mississippi threatens their secret cache of hard-earned nickels and pennies, Molly and her white friend Garrett risk their lives to retrieve the money.