Let’s go on a drive and hit the highway with these books for tweens. Enjoy the open road and have an adventure. Curated by Katie Rivers Ocmond
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The Vanderbeekers on the Road by Kareina Yan Glaser
A surprise road trip turns rocky when the younger siblings try to keep their family from ever facing change.
The popular Harlem family is putting the VAN in Vanderbeekers as they hit the highway to give their dad the best birthday surprise EVER! Re-creating a road trip Papa never got the chance to take with his own father, the whole crew is packed and ready for a cross-country adventure.
Things get off to a rocky start when the car breaks down on their way to pick up Papa. But they really veer off course when Laney discovers that Jessie and Orlando are interviewing at a college once they get to California. How can they even think about leaving New York? Wouldn’t that change their family? And how can she and her other siblings stop them?
Read a book? It’s summer vacation!
A family road trip is supposed to be a lot of fun . . . unless, of course, you’re the Heffleys. The journey starts off full of promise, then quickly takes several wrong turns. Gas station bathrooms, crazed seagulls, a fender bender, and a runaway pig—not exactly Greg Heffley’s idea of a good time. But even the worst road trip can turn into an adventure—and this is one the Heffleys won’t soon forget.
A Whole Nother Story by Cuthbert Soup
The three Cheeseman children, their father, and their psychic dog are all on the run. From whom? Well the CIA, naturally. But also corporate agents #5, #29, and # 207, plus two international superspies — one of whom happens to be a chimpanzee. They all want Dr. Cheeseman and his late wife’s greatest invention–a machine with unspeakable powers–OK, I’ll say it. It’s a time machine. But it’s not working right yet, so put all ideas of time travel out of your head.
Instead, please enjoy this high stakes, high action, hijinx-filled chase, and the bizarre characters our Cheeseman friends will meet as they protect not just their parents’ invention, but their mother’s sacred memory. It’s an adventure novel like no other.
Oh yeah, and did we mention the entertaining, plot-exposition filled, unsolicited advice you’ll receive along the way? So you didn’t ask for it? Yeah, that’s why it’s unsolicited.
Vacation Queen by Marci Peschke
Kylie Jean is on her summer vacation and, like any normal kid, she’s bored! As she reads the book she checked out from the library, she gets the idea that she needs an adventure! When her father comes home from work and announces he’ll be accepting an award in New York City, she knows that’s the perfect trip.
Kylie Jean brings her “best cousin” Lucy with her on the excursion. Together, they use an atlas to draw up a route and itinerary for their road trip from Texas to New York. The girls choose a surprise stop for each family member based on what they like. They stay in a cabin, camp in a tent, and stay in a hotel as their trip progresses. It culminates in New York City, where Kylie Jean gets to see the Statue of Liberty, which she calls the “Queen” of Liberty because of her big crown.
A delightful story with a dollop of tourist information and a lot of family love.
Breathing Underwater by Sarah Allen
Breathing Underwater is a middle grade novel exploration of sisterhood, dreams, and what it means to be there for someone you love.
Olivia is on the road trip of her dreams, with her trusty camera and her big sister Ruth by her side. Three years ago, before their family moved from California to Tennessee, Olivia and Ruth buried a time capsule on their favorite beach. Now, they’re taking an RV back across the country to uncover the memories they left behind. But Ruth’s depression has been getting worse, so Olivia has created a plan to help her remember how life used to be: a makeshift scavenger hunt across the country, like pirates hunting for treasure, taking pictures and making memories along the way.
All she wants is to take the picture that makes her sister smile. But what if things can never go back to how they used to be? What if they never find the treasure they’re seeking? Through all the questions, loving her sister, not changing her, is all Olivia can do—and maybe it’s enough.
Sanitized for Your Protection by Stephen Pastis
We won’t fail, despite what the name says.
Behold! You are all about to be witnesses to greatness.
In this fourth volume of Timmy Failure’s memoirs, Timmy is forced to hit the road in a cross-country trip that includes Timmy’s mom, Total the polar bear, Doorman Dave, and smells-like-a-tangerine criminal mastermind Molly Moskins. It’s a world gone mad, where good becomes bad, and Timmy Failure is a condemned man.
Someone call the authorities. . . .
My Diary from the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Told in diary form by an irresistible heroine, this playful and perceptive novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the May Bird trilogy sparkles with science, myth, magic, and the strange beauty of the everyday marvels we sometimes forget to notice.
Spirited, restless Gracie Lockwood has lived in Cliffden, Maine, her whole life. She’s a typical girl in an atypical world: one where sasquatches helped to win the Civil War, where dragons glide over Route 1 on their way south for the winter (sometimes burning down a T.J. Maxx or an Applebee’s along the way), where giants hide in caves near LA and mermaids hunt along the beaches, and where Dark Clouds come for people when they die.
To Gracie it’s all pretty ho-hum…until a Cloud comes looking for her little brother Sam, turning her small-town life upside down. Determined to protect Sam against all odds, her parents pack the family into a used Winnebago and set out on an epic search for a safe place that most people say doesn’t exist: The Extraordinary World. It’s rumored to lie at the ends of the earth, and no one has ever made it there and lived to tell the tale. To reach it, the Lockwoods will have to learn to believe in each other—and to trust that the world holds more possibilities than they’ve ever imagined.
Barfing in the backseat : how I survived my family road trip by Henry Winkler
Hank’s dad has decided to enter a crossword-puzzle tournament, and he wants to make a family road trip of it! So the family piles into the car—along with Frankie and Katherine the iguana (Hank and Emily each get to bring a “friend”). When they reach their destination, they’ll get to spend the day at a roller-coaster park during Hank’s dad’s tournament! The only caveat is that Hank has a homework packet to finish before they get there . . . which he somehow manages to lose at a stop along the way. Suddenly, Hank doesn’t feel so good . . . Can Hank and Frankie rescue the lost packet and get Hank on a roller coaster?
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
Five years. That’s how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, crisscrossing the nation. It’s also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash.
Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished – the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box – she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days…without him realizing it.
Along the way, they’ll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there’s Gladys….
Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all…but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after”.
Drive Me Crazy by Terra Elan McVoy
Buckle up…
Lana and Cassie have met only once before, at the wedding of Lana’s Grandpa Howe and Cassie’s Grandma Tess two months ago. They didn’t exactly hit it off—in fact, depending on who you ask, that first meeting was either an embarrassment or a disaster—but they’re about to spend an entire week together, just the two of them and their honeymooning grandparents, road-tripping in Cassie’s grandmother’s Subaru.
Lana thinks a summer road trip sounds like fun, but the backseat is a crowded place for two tween girls with two huge secrets to hide, and this bumpy road to friendship is full of unexpected twists and turns. Like it or not, they’re in this together, full speed ahead on the adventure of a lifetime.
Shelf Analysis 