The Forbidden Flats

Eddleman, Peggy. The Forbidden Flats (Sky Jumpers #2)
September 23rd 2014 by Random House Books for Young Readers
Copy received from Young Adult Books Central and reviewed there.

In this sequel to Sky Jumpers, Hopes community of White Rock is hit by an earthquake. The damage to the buildings is  bad enough, but the real danger lies in the fact that the Bomb's Breath, a fifteen foot wall of deadly gas, is lowering dangerously and will affect the community very soon. Local scientists decide that this can be reversed if they introduce seforium into the atmosphere, but the closest place this can be found is 500 miles away across the Forbidden Flats, in the Rocky Mountains. With the help of guide, Luke, several townspeople, including Hope and her friends, take off to try to get the seforium in time, taking with them Ameiphus (the medicine they discovered in the last book) to trade. The journey is treacherous, but Hope finds out information about her birth mother from an unlikely source.
Strengths: This series is a great dystopian one for middle grade readers. I liked the details about what happened during WWIII to make the climate and topography so treacherous, and the structure of the various towns and settlements that the group encounters gives a good cross-section of how people in a post-apocalyptic world might reimagine civilization. The children being the brave ones who save the day never hurts, either!
Weaknesses: The story line about Hope's mother wasn't all that necessary, and slowed down the narrative for me and felt a bit interpolative.