ROAD TRIPS

You Are Here is the 2011 statewide summer reading theme for teens.  For adults the theme is "Novel Destinations," and for children it is "One World, Many Stories."  I will use "You Are Here" over the course of the summer as a launching point for a few book lists featuring travel in various forms, such as: Road Trips, Time Travel, World Travel, Space Travel, and Travel Nonfiction, etc.  Titles from the lists will be on display in the Young Adult area of the Library through August.   

TAKE A ROAD TRIP

As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth, by Lynne Perkins, 2010.

A teen boy encounters one comedic calamity after another when his train strands him in the middle of nowhere, & everything comes down to luck.

The Car, by Gary Paulsen, 1994. 

A teenager travels west, on his own, in a kit car he built himself, and along the way picks up two Vietnam veterans, who take him on an eye-opening journey.

Going Bovine, by Libba Bray, 2009.

Cameron Smith, a disaffected 16 year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip to find a cure, with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital.

Hit the Road, by Caroline Cooney, 2005.

Sixteen-year-old Brittany acts as chauffeur for her grandmother and three other eighty-plus-year-old women going to what is supposedly their college reunion, on a long drive that involves lies, theft, and kidnappings.

 

How to be Bad, by E. Lockhart; Sarah Mlynowski; Lauren Myracle, 2008.
Told in alternating voices, Jesse, Vicks, & Mel, hoping to leave all their worries & woes behind, escape by taking a road trip to Miami.

In the Path of Falling Objects, by Andrew Smith, 2009.

In 1970, after their older brother is shipped off to Vietnam, sixteen-year-old Jonah and his younger brother Simon leave home to find their father, who is being released from an Arizona prison, but soon find themselves hitching a ride with a violent killer.

Paper Towns, by John Green, 2008.

One month before graduating from his Florida high school, Quentin "Q" basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.

Rainbow Road, by Alex Sanchez, 2007.

While driving across the United States during the summer after high school graduation, three young gay men encounter various bisexual & homosexual people & make some decisions about their own relationships & lives.

Roughing It, by Mark Twain, 1888.

From stagecoach travel to the etiquette of prospecting, Twain relates the true-ish escapades of his 5 years of travels in the American West from 1861 to 1866.  Informative as well as humorous.

Solace of the Road, by Siobhan Dowd, 2009.

While running away from a London foster home just before her fifteenth birthday, Holly has ample time to consider her years of residential care and her early life with her Irish mother, whom she is now trying to reach.

The Things A Brother Knows, by Dana Reinhardt, 2010.

Three years after serving overseas in the Marines, Levi's brother, Boaz, returns to his Boston suburb a hero. After isolating himself from the family, Boaz announces his plans to hike the Appalachian Trail, yet Levi suspects his brother has another itinerary in mind.

You Don't Know About Me, by Brian Meehl, 2011.

Billy has spent his almost-16 years with four cardinal points--Mother, Christ, Bible, and Home-school--but when he sets off on a wild road trip to find the father he thought was dead, he learns much about himself and life.

 

Zigzag, by Ellen Wittlinger, 2003.

A high-school junior makes a trip with her aunt and two cousins, discovering places she did not know existed and strengths she did not know she had.