Description
Product Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin comes a middle-grade road-trip story through American race relations past and present, perfect for fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Jason Reynolds.
How to Go on an Unplanned Road Trip with Your Grandma:
- Grab a Suitcase: Prepacked from the big spring break trip that got CANCELLED.
- Fasten Your Seatbelt: G'ma's never conventional, so this trip won't be either.
- Use the Green Book: G'ma's most treasured possession. It holds history, memories, and most important, the way home.
What Not to Bring:
- A Cell Phone: Avoid contact with Dad at all costs. Even when G'ma starts acting stranger than usual.
Take a trip through the American South with the New York Times bestselling author Nic Stone and an eleven-year-old boy who is about to discover that the world hasn't always been a welcoming place for kids like him, and things aren't always what they seem--his G'ma included.
Review
Praise for Clean Getaway:
"A road novel that serves in part as a primer on important scenes and themes of the civil-rights movement... [A] poignant caper." —The Wall Street Journal
"An absolute firecracker of a book." —Booklist, starred review
“A heartwarming, family-centered adventure that will leave readers guessing until the end.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Rich in history, Stone's middle-grade debut entertains and informs young readers....A road trip to remember." —Kirkus Reviews
"Stone has crafted a history lesson in road-trip form....a good addition for school libraries seeking unconventional approaches to history.” —School Library Journal
Praise for Dear Martin:
"Powerful, wrenching." —John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Turtles All the Way Down
"Absolutely incredible, honest, gut-wrenching. A must read!" —Angie Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of The Hate U Give
"Painfully timely and deeply moving." —Jodi Picoult
"Raw and gripping." —Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling coauthor of All American Boys
About the Author
Nic Stone is the author of the New York Times bestseller and William C. Morris finalist Dear Martin and its companion novel Dear Justyce, which looks at the lives of black incarcerated juveniles. She also wrote the teen novels Odd One Out, an NPR Best Book and Rainbow Book List Top Ten and Jackpot, a love-ish story that takes a searing look at economic inequality. Clean Getaway, her middle-grade debut, deals with coming to grips with the pain of the past and the humanity of our heroes. It received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, who called it "an absolute firecracker of a book."
nicstone.info
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Quite a Ways to Go
It might sound silly, but to William “Scoob” Lamar, the Welcome to Alabama the Beautiful sign looks . . . well, beautiful. Not as beautiful as his best friend Shenice Lockwood in her yellow sundress, but beautiful enough to make Scoob tip his head back, close his eyes, and sigh into the breeze blowing through the open passenger-side window of G’ma’s Winnebago.
Exhale Dad’s lockdown. Inhale the sweet fragrance of freedom. Which smells like pine mixed with a little bit of truck exhaust.
“You all right over there, Scoob-a-doob?” G’ma says from the driver’s seat. She’s propped up on the gingham-covered foam wedge she uses to see over the steering wheel, pale, polka-dotted little hands perfectly positioned at ten and two. She’s only four feet, eleven inches tall, G’ma is.
Hearing his full nickname makes Scoob cringe. G’ma gave it to him when he was five years old and obsessed with an old cartoon he used to watch at her house about a dog who liked to solve mysteries. G’ma thought it was just too adorable! that he couldn’t pronounce Scooby-Doo. And because Shenice was G’ma’s neighbor, she picked up on the nickname and started using it at school. So it stuck.
Well, the Scoob part did. Which is fine. Kinda cool, even.
Scoob-a