You're invited to the wildest ride of the year! An exciting novel featuring a group of kids competing in a giant safari park challenge, this book is packed with animal facts, puzzles and more making it the perfect book for readers looking for their next adventure. Twelve-year old Lucy can’t believe her luck when she is selected for the Wildlands Safari Escape Challenge, which involves solving a series of mind-bending puzzles to unlock access to new animal habitats across the local safari park. Her team will be racing the Wildlands Ambassadors, a group of student animal experts. And if they win, wildlife-loving Lucy will get the chance to be an Ambassador herself! But this challenge is trickier than Lucy expects—her team is in for a wild ride! Broken locks, downed electronics, and empty animal enclosures are just the start. Lucy discovers something truly terrifying: Wildlands’ beloved baby elephant is on the loose and might be in danger! The team is sure this can’t be part of the competition—and with their walkie-talkie on the fritz, they have no way to call for help. Their fun puzzle has turned into a serious test, but Lucy and her team will surprise everyone with how they tackle the real Wildlands challenge. " An entertaining, puzzle-filled adventure for animal lovers." — Kirkus Reviews " An engrossing, animal-focused adventure about the power that comes in trusting a team—and yourself." — Booklist Natalie D. Richards is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of 49 Miles Alone, Four Found Dead, Seven Dirty Secrets, Five Total Strangers, Six Months Later, and One Was Lost, among other young adult thrillers. 15 Secrets to Survival was her middle-grade debut, and her latest middle-grade adventure story is Survive This Safari. Natalie lives in Ohio with her three children and a ridiculously furry dog named Wookiee. Chapter 1 You’ve won an invitation to the WILDLANDS SAFARI ESCAPE CHALLENGE SAT–SUN APR 12–13 AT WILDLANDS SAFARI PARK Stay in a Wildlands Camp! Solve brain-bending puzzles in a race against the Wildlands Ambassadors! Unlock gates to access new animal areas! Win amazing prizes! Are you ready for a truly WILD adventure? A Wildlands vehicle will pick you up for a ride to the safari park, where you’ll camp out with three other randomly drawn testers and an escape challenge counselor! After a few warm-up puzzles, you’ll start Day 2 on a gated path, solving puzzles in a race against our student team of experts, the Wildlands Ambassadors! Each solution will unlock new animal enclosures where you’ll get extra close to our wildest residents. Solve all the puzzles successfully and each team member will win a Special Zoo Experience or Camp of their choice at the Columbus Zoo. And someone may have the option to shoot for a spot on the Wildlands Ambassador team! READER NOTE! WANT TO HELP LUCY SOLVE THE PUZZLES? GRAB SOME PAPER AND A PEN OR PENCIL AND LET’S SURVIVE THIS SAFARI! Lucy looks at the invitation carefully. She turns it over and over. She double-, tri-ple-, quadruple-checks the date and then the time and then the letters on the out-side of the envelope from the L to the A. There are probably a few other Lucys in the town of Zanesville, but another Lucy Q. Spagnola? She’s pretty sure she’s the only one of those in the whole state of Ohio. Which means Lucy is definitely, posi-tively, 100 percent invited to the Wildlands Safari Escape Challenge. Even the idea of a free special experience at the zoo makes her heart flutter like there are hummingbirds trapped in her rib cage. After all, zoos mean animals, and the only thing Lucy loves more than puzzles is animals, and she knows a ton about them too. Despite all of that, Lucy takes a deep breath to try to get those chest hummingbirds to settle down. She absolutely, positively can’t get excited about this. Because it’s Wildlands. The most terrible, depressing, humiliating day of Lu-cy’s life happened at Wildlands, and the Ambassadors were there. There is clearly only one reasonable thing to do with this invitation. Lucy pinches it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. Then she stomps on the pedal to open the kitchen trash and drops it inside. “No way, Santa Fe.” Alex’s voice is unmistakable. Lucy crosses her arms and looks up at her big sister. Here’s what she knows for sure about Alex, starting with the fact that if Lucy were a bobcat, Alex would be a lion. 1. Alex is eight years older and seven inches taller than Lucy and, much like a lion, will always be more imposing and impressive. 2. She works two jobs, as an animal care intern at Wildlands Safari Park Rescue Sanctuary and as a tutor to kids in the fourth through sixth grades. And she does all of it while studying environmental science in college (which is how she ended up with the Wildlands job to begin with). 3. She is basically the smartest, coolest, most athletic person Lucy knows (captain of her high school volleyball team and now