No Passengers Beyond This Point

Narration by three narrators makes sense for a story with a quickly shifting reality. Jessie Bernstein portrays 12-year-old Finn, who's tense with worry about the foreclosure of his family's home and his mother's plan to send her children to their Colorado uncle. Becca Battoe depicts Finn's 14-year-old sister, India, who's sullen and resentful at being responsible for her young, eccentric sister, Mouse. Tara Sands's lilting high pitch convinces listeners of Mouse's happy acceptance when an hour's plane trip brings the siblings to Falling Bird, an unsettling place that appeals to each of their individual sensibilities--at first. Because all three narrators establish a strong sense of character, the tensions that divide the three heroes add a chilling quality to an action-packed puzzle. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

December 6, 2010
Best known for her Newbery Honor–winning historical fiction, Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts) forays into high-concept fantasy with mixed results. Having lost the family home to foreclosure, the widowed schoolteacher mother of three—India, Finn, and Mouse Tompkins—puts them on a plane to Denver to live with an uncle while she finishes out the academic year in California. After some turbulence, the plane lands, but what follows is a hallucinatory journey, which unfolds in alternating first-person chapters narrated by each sibling. The trio is given a rock star welcome by the residents of a city called Falling Bird, chauffeured in a pink, feathered taxi by a 12-year-old, and offered dream homes and—except for six-year-old Mouse—jobs. They sense something's amiss, and after some soul-searching, especially by angry teen India, the children realize all they want is to reach their uncle's place. The revelation of what really happened doesn't quite square with a narrative told in three voices, but Choldenko's pacing is sure and her use of airport argot (white courtesy phones, a missing black box) adds an inventive element to this story of unlikely survival. Ages 10–up.