Publisher’s Description
Readers will be hoping for a happy ending for Hank in Newbery Honor-winning Gennifer Choldenko’s heartwarming story about a boy who struggles to keep his family together when his mother doesn’t come home.
When eleven-year-old Hank’s mother doesn’t come home, he takes care of his little sister, Boo, like he always does. But it’s been a week now. They’ve run out of food and their mother has never been gone this long… Hank knows he needs help, so he and Boo track down the stranger listed as their emergency contact.
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But asking for help has consequences. It means social workers, a new school, and having to answer questions about his mother that he’s been trying to keep secret. And if they can’t find his mother soon, Hank and Boo could end up in different foster homes; he could lose everything.
Gennifer Choldenko has written a heartbreaking, healing, and ultimately hopeful story about how complicated family can be, how you can love someone even when you can’t trust them, and the transformative power of second chances.
Amanda’s thoughts
This book was good. THIS BOOK WAS GOOD. I recently enjoyed my first taste of COVID (I know, the doctors my husband and I visited to get Paxlovid were pretty sure we’re one of the last people on Earth to get COVID for the first time) and I wasn’t even able to read for much of the time I was stuck in bed. When I could, I read a bunch of books for kids ages 12-18 for an article I’m writing and then looked at my to-read list trying to decide what to pick up next. I always admit that I do indeed judge a book by its cover. I liked this cover, so I picked up the next book. And boy am I glad I did!
Hank, who is almost 12, has been carrying a huge burden. His mother has a tendency to disappear for days at a time, leaving him alone to care for his little sister, Boo. It’s no big deal, Hank thinks. He’s capable. It’s not that long. They’re fine. Most readers will understand that it’s a big deal, that it doesn’t matter if he’s capable, that it’s too long. But when you only know your own experience, you just go ahead and often make excuses and justifications for things you’re pretty sure aren’t actually okay. After his mother goes on vacation again, this time for a week, Hank starts to think they need help. They have no family or friends to help them (or have them on their radar), so Hank packs up and drives his sister to an address of someone he doesn’t actually know, but who was listed as an emergency contact on a form. Suddenly, this stranger is now responsible for Hank and Boo. No one can find their mother. Child protection services obviously intervene and start talking about foster homes, abandonment and separation of children.
While all these truly terrible things are happening, Hank is also somehow living a really good version of his life. He’s temporarily attending a new school, he’s surrounded by nice kids who want to be his friends, it looks like he’ll make the basketball team, and his new neighbor, Ray, is happy to take on a parental role to make sure the kids are okay right now. There are so many wonderful things happening, but his mother is still not around. And all this wonderfulness seems so temporary. And Hank, as a child, ends up in a very difficult situation, where he has to make decisions and choose who to support. He is forced to deeply analyze what is really true in relation to his mother, to face the consequences of his actions and hers, and to lose all the good that was happening to him.
Now, this is a book for kids ages 1-5, so we know that everything will end well. Or sort of well, because nothing that happens to her mother is okay. No resolution could fix it. But just because we can assume things might end up okay for Hank and Boo doesn’t mean it isn’t a very disturbing journey to get to that point. What the kids are going through is unimaginable to many, but it’s also, without a doubt, the reality for many kids. It’s complicated, chaotic, illegal, and stressful. It’s also very real. And it’s easy, as a reader, to judge almost all the adults in this story, to judge the system, even the choices Hank makes. But this is one of those stories where you can’t really know how you would react (as a child or as an adult). You can wish for better parents and better systems, but that doesn’t change real life. So all you can do is read and hope that Hank and Boo do better.
Without a doubt one of my best reads of 2024.
Review copy courtesy of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781524718923
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Publication date: 11/06/2024
Age range: 10 – 13 years
Filed under: Book Reviews
