WORD LISTS

"Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz, List 3

Wed Jul 09 13:07:05 EDT 2025
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
Four young people find themselves struggling to survive against the devastating effects of climate change. Akira is caught inside a California wildfire; Owen and George battle and save a struggling polar bear in the Canadian tundra; and Natalie survives Miami's "Big One" hurricane.

This list covers vocabulary from "The Horse in the Pool"–"Going for a Swim."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5, List 6
ember
Akira turned to see red embers from the wildfire landing on the roof of Nova’s house and setting it on fire.
reflexive
Dodger devoured the apple, and Sue giggled reflexively as his lips tickled her hand.
incineration
The metal rims of the wheels had sunk three inches into the melting asphalt, and the truck ticked and popped and smoked, still hot from its incineration.
desolation
A big four-door pickup truck was driving slowly down the road.
Somebody else was alive in all this desolation.
blubber
“Polar bears have like four inches of blubber. They’re so good at retaining heat they don’t even show up when you film them with infrared cameras. They’re like arctic ninjas!”
reverence
George and Owen walked through the charred trees with a quiet reverence, as though they were walking through a battlefield with hundreds of fallen soldiers.
pang
They avoided other clumps of blackened trees just in case they stumbled into more holes, but each time Owen saw a burned-out denning site, he felt a pang of sadness.
incredulous
Owen stood and watched, incredulous, as the entire pond drained away in less than five minutes.
disintegrate
How could the permafrost have given way like that? Usually you needed a jackhammer to dig into permafrost, but this ground had disintegrated just from Owen walking on it.
habitat
“Well, any more habitats you want to destroy before we get back to town?”
solace
Natalie’s mind drifted to Mariposa, the fantasyland she had created when she was little. Mariposa used to be a place of retreat and solace for her, but all she could think of now were the maps and papers of Mariposa, swirling, ruined, in the dark water that had come crashing through the back wall of their house.
denizen
Another denizen of Miami’s canals, the huge snake was easily twelve feet long, with a spotted green-and-brown body as thick as Natalie’s leg.
refuge
It wasn’t as good a refuge as the three-story building had been, but it would have to do.
churning
Her legs fell into the churning storm surge, but she found enough strength to pull herself up and over the ledge.
surreal
Manatees weren’t dangerous, but seeing this one here, now, in the pool on the roof of a building, was totally surreal.

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