In Home Away From Home, Newbery Honor writer Cynthia Lord returns to some of her signature storytelling themes: displacement, friendship, households, animals and summer time. Fans of Rules, A Touch of Blue and Because of the Rabbit will take pleasure in studying concerning the intriguing animal on the novel’s heart, a white gyrfalcon usually seen within the Arctic.
Eleven-year-old Mia loves visiting her grandmother in coastal Maine each summer time, however issues are completely different this 12 months, as a result of Mia’s mom isn’t becoming a member of her. She’ll be again in Ohio, getting their outdated home able to promote, as she’s shopping for a brand new residence along with her boyfriend, Scott. Mia worries about leaving the one home she’s ever lived in and the likelihood of having to alter colleges, though her mother has promised she received’t must.
Mia additionally isn’t positive she likes Cayman, the know-it-all neighbor boy who spends a lot time with Grandma. Mia already should share Mom with Scott, and Dad has his new spouse and child, so “Grandma was the only person [Mia] didn’t have to share with anyone else.” But as Mia and Cayman’s friendship begins to gel, she realizes that he has issues of his personal, together with an absent father and a mom navigating alcoholism and melancholy.
When Mia and Cayman spot the magnificent gyrfalcon close to an eagle nest, the novel’s motion shortly ramps up. Mia posts an image on a birding web site, and shortly quite a few keen birdwatchers arrive, resulting in catastrophe. Lord adeptly handles Mia’s mother and father’ issues about her display screen time and on-line exercise, and the birding plotline excellently illustrates how a seemingly innocuous publish can achieve a life of its personal. Mia feels horribly responsible concerning the ramifications of her publish, and he or she identifies with the gyrfalcon, realizing that “she was young and a long way from home and maybe things would never be the same for her. And I knew exactly how that felt.”
Lord’s fluid prose and Mia’s vigorous, likable narration make Home Away From Home a riveting center grade novel. Descriptions of the gyrfalcon because it soars close to nesting eaglets transport readers to Maine’s rocky coast. Mia’s interactions with birdwatchers and a recreation warden add to the expertise, whereas Mia’s, Grandma’s and Cayman’s attentions to a stray cat properly bolster the displacement theme. Readers can be left feeling reassured, like Mia, who concludes: “This trip hadn’t been what I expected—and it kept surprising me. But even though change is scary, it brings new things, too.”
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