Northward to the Moon
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
In this beautiful follow-up to the highly acclaimed My One Hundred Adventures, Jane and her family have moved to Canada . . . but not for long. When her stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job as a high school French teacher (seems he doesn’t speak French), the family packs up and Jane embarks on a series of new adventures. At first, she imagines her family as a gang of outlaws, riding on horseback in masks, robbing trains, and traveling all the way to Mexico. But the reality is different: Setting off by car, they visit the tribe of Native Americans with whom Ned once lived, head to Las Vegas in search of Ned’s magician brother, and wind up spending the summer with his eccentric mother on her ranch out west. As Jane lives through it all—developing a crush on a ranch hand, reevaluating her relationship with Ned, watching her sister Maya’s painful growing up—she sees her world, which used to be so safe and secure, shift in strange and inconvenient ways.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This poignant sequel to Horvath's My One Hundred Adventures continues to trace the physical and emotional journeys of Jane's unconventional family. The story begins in Saskatchewan, where Jane's new stepfather, Ned, has taken a position as a French teacher. When he's fired from his job (it turns out that he doesn't know French), Jane, her parents, and her younger siblings head west to visit one of Ned's friends, an elderly Native American woman. Then the family moves on to Vegas, trailing Ned's estranged brother, who, for unknown reasons, has left them a bag of money. For a while, it's fun for Jane, pretending they are outlaws on the run ( I imagine us all on horseback with masks, robbing trains and making our way to Mexico ), but when they settle in with Ned's mother on her remote horse ranch, Jane begins to long for Massachusetts, her home before Ned entered the picture. A dynamic montage of dark and light moments, this novel shows rather than tells Jane's changing moods, her ambivalent feelings about being uprooted, and her quiet observations of her unpredictable yet endearing family members. Ages 10 13.
