Runaway
Readers rate it 3.4 (5 on Hardcover)
256 pages · Released Sep 12, 2006 · Knopf Books for Young Readers
Content report card
Runaway parent’s guide: what’s inside
Violence
Sexual content
LGBTQ+ themes
What it offers
Educational value
A note for parents
Runaway tackles serious themes of foster care, homelessness, and parental addiction through a young protagonist's journal entries, but does so with remarkable emotional honesty and hope rather than graphic depiction. The story emphasizes resilience, self-discovery, and the possibility of healing, making it appropriate for mature middle-grade and early teen readers who can handle heavy subject matter. Holly's journey validates her pain while ultimately affirming her capacity for growth and connection.
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From the publisher
"It's a cold, hard, cruel fact that my mother loved heroin more than she loved me."Holly is in her fifth foster home in two years and she's had enough. She's run away before and always been caught quickly. But she's older and wiser now--she's twelve--and this time she gets away clean.Through tough and tender and angry... "It's a cold, hard, cruel fact that my mother loved heroin more than she loved me."Holly is in her fifth foster home in two years and she's had enough. She's run away before and always been caught quickly. But she's older and wiser now--she's twelve--and this time she gets away clean.Through tough and tender and angry and funny journal entries, Holly spills out her story. We travel with her across the country--hopping trains, scamming food, sleeping in parks or homeless encampments. And we also travel with her across the gaping holes in her heart--as she finally comes to terms with her mother's addiction and death. Runaway is a remarkably uplifting portrait of a girl still young and stubborn and naive enough to hold out hope for finding a better place in the world, and within herself, to be.From the Hardcover edition.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Runaways
- Diaries
- Orphans
- Homeless persons
- Survival
- Juvenile Fiction
- Runaway children
- Survival skills
- Accelerated Reader
- Young Adult
- Adventure
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ISBN 9780375835223 · Knopf Books for Young Readers