Wildfire is part of the well-established genre of the survival story within children’s literature. There are many texts that feature young people finding the courage and skills to survive life-threatening situations. Rodman Philbrick has also written other books in this genre, including Zane and the Hurricane. The theme of survival and resilience through crisis is at the heart of many such novels, showing readers that they too could have what it takes to make it through a very challenging situation, even if they are not adults.

There are several kinds of conflict that feature in survival stories. One type of conflict is “person versus nature,” where the major threat facing the protagonist comes from the natural world. Although the bikers are antagonists in Wildfire, it is the fire itself that poses the primary and immediate threat to Sam and Delphy’s survival (with the climate change that enabled the wildfire’s rapid spread lurking as a secondary, more general threat). The fire is too powerful for the characters to defeat, so they must survive by escaping it. Because their survival is built on their ability to put distance between themselves and the fire, the

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