WORD LISTS

"Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz, List 4

Wed Jul 09 13:19:50 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 "Up and Over"–"Hurricane Zombie."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5, List 6
sequoia
The blackened, burned trees eventually gave way to live ponderosa pines, and then to untouched bearclover and white alder, and at last she and Dodger were back among the monarchs again. The giant sequoias. Right where they’d started that morning.
reluctantly
Dodger followed her lead, but reluctantly. Akira frowned. Why was he fighting her so much?
din
And then suddenly — WHOOSH — they were out of the scalding heat, out of the roaring, crackling din of the inferno. They were free!
writhing
All the wind went out of Akira. She gasped for air, writhing and clawing at the dry dirt and pine needles.
narwhal
What happened when all the new animals in the north killed off the arctic foxes and belugas and narwhals and polar bears that already lived there?
microbe
It was that warmer temperatures all around the world were melting the permafrost in the Arctic, and tiny microbes were feasting on the newly unfrozen plant material in the ground. It was the microbes that created methane — the farts — and methane was a greenhouse gas that trapped heat inside the atmosphere, making the earth hotter.
methane
It was the microbes that created methane — the farts — and methane was a greenhouse gas that trapped heat inside the atmosphere, making the earth hotter.
pantomime
Owen turned to George with big eyes and pantomimed chewing and clawing, and George immediately understood.
keen
He tapped his nose, reminding Owen of the polar bear’s keen sense of smell.
tenuous
The tracks washing away had exposed how tenuous life was up here in the north. Not just for the polar bears, but for the people, too.
aurora
It was dark now, and the winter sky was alive with the twisting, dancing, ghostly green lights of the aurora borealis. The northern lights.
mangrove
Everywhere she looked, the city and ocean and swamp were all one. A few taller buildings stood up out of the floodwaters like castles with moats, and the tops of palm trees and electric poles sprouted from the water like mangroves.
tentatively
A Latino family stepped tentatively out onto the balcony of another apartment building.
kayak
As Natalie stumbled blearily to the bathroom, she noticed a television, a case full of books, walls covered with posters of anime characters, and a bright orange kayak in the corner.
peninsula
In her dreams, Natalie saw a giant, swirling white storm as though she were looking down on it from space. It swallowed up the entire peninsula, and when it was gone, South Florida had been entirely erased from the map.

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