Ellen Cochrane Brings Science to Life for Middle Grades in Amazon Survival Story 'Follow the Water'

In Follow the Water: The Unbelievable True Story of a Teenager’s Survival in the Amazon, writer and former middle school teacher Ellen Cochrane tells the remarkable true story of a 17-year-old girl who survived a terrifying plane crash in 1971 in the Amazon rainforest and miraculously navigated her way to safety. The young girl was named Juliane Koepcke and at the time, she was flying to Lima, Peru, with her mother when their plane was struck by lightning and lost a wing. Soon after, the plane crashed into the uninhabited parts of the Amazon and she was launched two miles into the jungle still strapped to her seat. The seat then broke through the trees and she fell to the forest floor. Alone and determined, she relied on her knowledge of the rainforest to guide her to safety after 11 days. While not her own story, Cochrane did try her best to tell this event authentically and accurately. Unfortunately, she was not able to speak to Juliane herself about her experiences, so she had to find other ways to gather information. “…I had to circle all around her to find any scientist, any people, who would talk to me about the situation, about what actually happened and also about the science behind it, and I speak Spanish conversationally and can read it so it was in Peru, so I was able to get sources from the time and explain what happened and do further research that way…”

Geared toward students in grade 5 through high school, Cochrane hopes the book will spark readers’ curiosity about science and deepen their understanding of the natural world. She remarked, “I think in this world where, in this current environment… it’s important to let children understand how to go about forming fact-based opinion and learning truth about the world around us. To help that happen I am developing lesson plans that I will provide for free on my website, and teachers are more than welcome to download them and use this book either in science classes or in English classes. I taught… one of my most enjoyable ones when I was a teacher was teaching English language learners and this book also adapts really well for the English language learner, and it’s told pretty much in the present tense and it is very accessible with vocabulary and structure for the English learner.”