Book Review: Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner

        Kate Messner's novel, Eye of the Storm is for tween readers. Messner is known for writing to audiences of young children. Eye of the Storm is one of the few novels she has written for a middle school audience.  She had spent 15 years teaching middle school before going into writing. She has won many awards for her books.  

         Eye of the Storm, takes place in the future around the mid two-thousands. In that time global warming has caused storms to rage across the world. Huge tornadoes seem to devour the earth and people have to take shelter in underground storm safe rooms almost every week. The midwest has some of the worst storms and gigantic tornadoes.  

          A young girl named Jayden lives with her mother in Vermont. For one summer she goes to visit her father in a small town in Oklahoma called Placid Meadows. Placid Meadows is the one storm safe town in the world, where storms seem to magically surrender when they come close to the town. Jayden's father is the head of an organization that specializes in the study of trying to stop storms from increasing. The organization also runs a summer school for kids to learn about preventing storms. For the summer, Jayden attends that school.

         Her father gives her some data to enter into the storm simulator at the school that will hopefully decrease the amount of storm energy that comes through the simulator, but all it does is make the storm worse. Then one night, out of curiosity, Jayden sneaks into her Dad's office and logs onto his computer. She looks at the storm research and finds herself very confused. She doesn't understand much of the data, but she doesn't seem to find anything on decreasing storms and more on rebuilding old storms and making them stronger.

          Then Jayden hears footsteps, she knows her Dad is coming to the office. As fast as she can, she logs of his computer and hides underneath his desk. After looking on the computer a while he gets a phone call. He talks over the phone about how he used the storms to destroy farms and now they won't have any trouble trying to buy the farms for their own use. With this knowledge, Jayden gathers her friends and attempts to stop the biggest storm in all of history from making its way to placid meadows.

         Eye of the Storm, gives the reader such a thrill to find that someone the reader believed to be helpful becomes one of the hardest villains to defeat.  This story of good vs. evil, has many unexpected moments.  It has a lot of twists and turns.  I found it a fun read.