For some young adults every day is a fight for survival. For others they are thrust into extraordinary circumstances. These books examine the fortitude and strength that is needed to persevere.

• Anderson, Laurie Halse. Fever 1793.
  In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.
• Banks, Lynne Reid. Tiger, Tiger.
  Two tigers in ancient Rome are captured; one becomes the pet of Caesar’s daughter while the other is trained to be a killer.
• Hobbs, Will. Far North.
  After the destruction of their floatplane, sixteen-year-old Gabe and his Dene friend, Raymond, struggle to survive a winter in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories.
• McCaughrean, Geraldine. The White Darkness.
  Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.
• Mikaelsen, Ben. Touching Spirit Bear.
  This gripping, graphic survival story from an award-winning writer paints an unsparing picture of one violent teen and offers a poignant testimony to the power of pain that can destroy and may also heal.
• Orlev, Uri. Run, Boy, Run.
  Based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and must survive throughout the war in the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside.
• Paver, Michelle. Wolf Boy.
  After his brother dies from a brutal bear attack, Torak is befriended by a wolf.
• Weaver, Will. Memory Boy.
  Sixteen-year-old Miles and his family must flee their Minneapolis home and begin a new life in the wilderness after a chain of cataclysmic volcanic explosions creates dangerous conditions in their city.
• Zindel, Paul. Rats.
  When mutant rats threaten to take over Staten Island, which has become a huge landfill, Sarah and her younger brother Mike try to figure out how to stop them.