Almost Home

December 1, 2007
Gr 9 Up-This episodic, meandering novel about seven runaway teens struggling to survive on the Hollywood streets is filled with the rough language and gritty details of drug use and sex (including prostitution) that accompany such a lifestyle. Most of these kids have fled abusive homes, although one girl has simply gone in search of more excitement than her small town offers. Most disturbing is the depiction of a 12-year-old who adopts the name Eeyore when she takes to the streets to escape the sexual abuse of her older stepbrother and the bullying of schoolmates. Although Eeyore's comfortable home is in the nearby Hollywood Hills and her stepmother frequently shops at the Whole Foods market where the girl and her new friends go Dumpster-diving for food, there is no evidence that her parents or school authorities are making any effort to find her. Several times, she returns home to take food and money, but even when she surprises her stepmother during one of these forays, the woman doesn't ask where she has been. Instead, she berates Eeyore for leaving home to be with a dirty, homeless boy, threatens to call the police, and then does nothing as the girl and her friend leave. Readers will find this and many other aspects of the story deeply distressing."Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2007
Smashed glass, crumbled concrete, holes in fences. Its all about finding the cracks in things and shoving them open till theyre big enough for you to squeeze in. Blanks harrowing first novel for young adults follows seven homeless teens through the streets of Los Angeles. Their reasons for leaving home are complicated and grim: incest, abuse, abandonment by adult lovers. Each chapter, narrated in a different teens voice, gives a graphic, unsparing view of the teens brutal, dangerous realities: families are unsafe; girls and boys sell their bodies for money and drugs. The voices share a uniform style that results in an indistinct sense of the characters, but Blank writes with gritty, urban poetry thatreveals the heartbreaking fracturing of selves, from vulnerable child to hardened street kid, that allows the teens to survive. As in Catherine Ryan Hydes Becoming Chloe (2006), also about homeless teens running from abuse, the characters in this accomplished, disturbing debut find hope by speaking devastating secrets aloud and feeling heard and believed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)