Runaway by Wendelin Van Draanen

May 8th, 2008 at 9:25am |

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Audience: Middle School

Rating: B

Synopsis:

Holly is a sixth grade runaway. She’s been placed in an awful foster home and decides that she has little choice but to leave. This novel takes the form of a journal that Holly confides in as she journeys all the way out to California in the hopes of finding a new home… or a least a place that she feels safe.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) As you learned more about Holly’s back-story, I could see why she was so untrusting and why she felt that she was safer on her own instead of trusting any cops or social workers. Holly has had at least two horrible foster families. It sounds like her first family might have been better, but at that point Holly was too busy grieving the loss of her mother and wasn’t ready to be the happy, shiny child that the foster family expected.

I was surprised how easily Holly was able to avoid detection for so many months. I am NOT saying that any part of her life was easy, but Holly was able to fairly easily dodge and avoid anyone who asked probing questions about her parents or her life.

Another fact that surprised me was that the homeless people didn’t always help each other; Venus, Martin, Hog, all tried to make life harder for Holly, instead of easier. But there were also plenty of people that helped Holly along the way: the Spanish-speaking homeless woman, the farmer and his wife, and Sammy.

The use of poetry in Holly’s journal wasn’t annoying (like I had first expected!); it was a neat way of showing Holly’s emotions – which she wasn’t always ready to openly write in her journal. My favorite poems were: Neon is my Nightlight and Almost.