Monday's special is...The Compound

The Compound by Stephanie Bodeen

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Stephanie's website.

Stephanie Bodeen's eight picture books have garnered a list of awards and honors as long as my arm. (And I have a long arm.) Now her debut young adult novel The Compound is continuing the tradition. It has already been nominated for a pair of American Library Association awards, including Best Book.

Publishers Weekly gave it a coveted starred review:

Bodeen, acclaimed as the writer of such picture books as Elizabeti's Doll, turns out a high-wire act of a first novel, a thriller that exerts an ever-tighter grip on readers. Eli, the 15-year-old son of a billionaire techno-preneur, has spent the last six years with his family in the massive underground shelter his father has built, knowing that nuclear war has destroyed the world he knows—and killed his grandmother and his twin brother, who couldn't reach the compound in time. With nine years to go before the air outside will be safe to breathe again, the food supply shows signs of running out, but Eli's father has a solution—provided they jettison all morals and ethics . . .

PW went on to call the climax to The Compound "breathless." I don't see how it could be anything but, given how it begins:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
---T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot was wrong. My world ended with a bang the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us.

The sound was brutal.

Final.

An echoing resounding boom that slashed my nine-year-old heart in two. My fists beat on the door. I bawled. The screaming had left me hoarse and my feet hurt.

Through my teary eyes, the bear and elk on my father’s shirt swam together. Beneath the chamois, Dad’s chest heaved. Most likely a result of the previous forty minutes. Finally, my gaze focused and went beyond him, searching. I gulped down a painful sob.

Had everyone made it?

Further down the corridor I saw my weeping mother, dressed in a burgundy robe, dark tendrils dangling from her once-careful braid. Mom clutched my six-year-old sister, Terese, a sobbing pig-tailed lump in pink flowered flannel. From one small hand drooped her beloved Winnie the Pooh.

Behind them stomped my eleven-year-old sister, Lexie, dark hair mussed, arms crossed over the front of her blue silk pajamas. Not being brother of the year material, I didn’t care if she made it or not.

But my grandmother wasn’t in sight.

“Where’s Gram?” I shouted.

Dad patted my head, hard and steady, like I was a dog. He spoke slowly, in the same tone he used to explain to the household help the exact amount of starch he required in his shirts. “Eli, listen to me. There wasn’t enough time. I waited as long as I could. It was imperative I get the rest of you to safety. We had to shut the door before it was too late.”

The door. Always, the door.

Another look. No sign of my twin brother. He was the person I needed the most. Where was he?

My pounding heart suggested I already knew the answer. “Eddy?” His name caught in my throat, stuck tight by the panic rising up from my belly.

Dad whirled around, his tone accusing. “I thought Eddy was with you.”

My head swung from side to side. Between sobs, the words barely eked out. “He went with Gram.”

Dad’s face clouded with indecision. Just for a moment. Had that moment lasted, it might have changed all of our futures. But Dad snapped back into control. “I still have one of you.” With just six words, my childhood ended, went away.

As did the rest of the world.



1. Stephanie was obviously locked in the closet once or twice as a kid. What did she do to deserve such punishment?

2. With what Hollywood actor would Stephanie most want to share six years in an underground bunker?

3. How did her characters in The Compound solve their dwindling food crisis?

Best set of answers wins a personalized copy of The Compound straight from Stephanie's shelf. Autographed books make great gifts.