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Summary
Summary
In this beautiful follow-up to the highly acclaimed My One Hundred Adventures , Jane and her family have moved to Canada . . . but not for long. When her stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job as a high school French teacher (seems he doesn't speak French), the family packs up and Jane embarks on a series of new adventures. At first, she imagines her family as a gang of outlaws, riding on horseback in masks, robbing trains, and traveling all the way to Mexico. But the reality is different: Setting off by car, they visit the tribe of Native Americans with whom Ned once lived, head to Las Vegas in search of Ned's magician brother, and wind up spending the summer with his eccentric mother on her ranch out west. As Jane lives through it all--developing a crush on a ranch hand, reevaluating her relationship with Ned, watching her sister Maya's painful growing up--she sees her world, which used to be so safe and secure, shift in strange and inconvenient ways.
Author Notes
Polly Horvath is one of the most highly acclaimed authors writing today. A National Book Award winner and Newbery Honor recipient, her most recent novel, My One Hundred Adventures , was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a Booklist Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Books, a New York Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner, and an Amazon Best Book of 2008.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This poignant sequel to Horvath's My One Hundred Adventures continues to trace the physical and emotional journeys of Jane's unconventional family. The story begins in Saskatchewan, where Jane's new stepfather, Ned, has taken a position as a French teacher. When he's fired from his job (it turns out that he doesn't know French), Jane, her parents, and her younger siblings head west to visit one of Ned's friends, an elderly Native American woman. Then the family moves on to Vegas, trailing Ned's estranged brother, who, for unknown reasons, has left them a bag of money. For a while, it's fun for Jane, pretending they are outlaws on the run ("I imagine us all on horseback with masks, robbing trains and making our way to Mexico"), but when they settle in with Ned's mother on her remote horse ranch, Jane begins to long for Massachusetts, her home before Ned entered the picture. A dynamic montage of dark and light moments, this novel shows rather than tells Jane's changing moods, her ambivalent feelings about being uprooted, and her quiet observations of her unpredictable yet endearing family members. Ages 10-13. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Library ed.isbn 978-0-375-96110-6 $20.99 g In the sequel to My One Hundred Adventures (rev. 9/08), twelve-year-old narrator Jane Fielding cools on the adventurous life -- a surprising shift for the intrepid Horvath. Jane; her sister Maya, eight; and their two little brothers have barely resettled in Saskatchewan with their mother and her oddball new husband Ned, and already Ned has lost his job as a French teacher, his first full-time job ever, because...he doesn't know French. Is he hopeless? The story is as much Ned's as Jane's, then, as the family ricochets from the Saskatchewan snafu to a brief, baffling stay in British Columbia, where a shady brother of Ned's has left him a bag of money, to a futile stopover at Las Vegas, to the Nevada ranch of Ned's estranged mother, Dorothy, where the family and the story settle down long enough for Jane to develop a crush on ranch hand Ben and bitterly resent Ned's betrayal of her secret, the one dramatic fulcrum. Plainspoken Dorothy, meanwhile, becomes a family favorite. The book ends with the Fieldings gratefully back in their Massachusetts seaside home, Dorothy ensconced nearby, and virtually nothing explained -- not the mysterious bag of money, or the questionable behavior of the motley characters, or the identity of the children's fathers (one of whom may be Ned). Less graced by Horvath's lingering evocations of place and time, this also relegates the engaging children -- hopeful Jane, troubled Maya, and their irrepressible little brothers -- to the role of responders. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
This sequel to My One Hundred Adventures (2008) picks up the story of Jane and her family a year later in Saskatchewan, as they prepare to move away, returning to Massachusetts by a roundabout route. Circumstances arise that lead Ned, Jane's stepfather, to reconnect with women from his past: first, an elderly First Nations woman who took him in when he was young, and next, his estranged mother and sisters. His journey determines the family's destinations and parts of the plot. While Jane narrates the novel, much of it feels less like her story than in the previous book, though a particularly poignant subplot involves her enduring the hope and pain of a first, hopeless crush and the humiliation of realizing that everyone else knows. Many characters here are distinct, wonderfully idiosyncratic individuals, and Horvath's fine-tuned observations are conveyed with subtlety and precision. The open-ended conclusion seems to promise another sequel.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Highly unusual situations and eccentric, individualistic characters fill this quirky sequel to My One Hundred Adventures (Random, 2008). Jane, the oldest of four children, narrates her family's escapades as they go off in search of their stepdad's long-lost brother. Because of Ned's job as a French teacher, the family was reluctantly transplanted from their seaside home in Massachusetts to Saskatchewan. As this story begins, Ned is fired when it is discovered that he doesn't know French. Jane's somewhat mature musings about family life and Horvath's rich prose and characterization breathe life into this humorous and poignant tale. Though basically irresponsible, Ned is likable in spite of his limited parenting skills. He has been out of touch with his own mother and sisters for 20 years. Maya, Jane's eight-year-old sister, suffers from the unstable family life, a problem that Jane seems to notice more than anyone else. Their mother is the epitome of patience and denial. When Ned is called to the bedside of Mary, an elderly Native American who helped him 20 years earlier, the family travels from Saskatchewan to New Brunswick. Ned discovers that his brother, a Las Vegas magician, has left a bag of money with her. Suspicions abound about its origins. Ned's quest to find his brother leads him to his mother's ranch in Nevada and myriad complications. Horvath once again writes with the humor, compassion, and sensitivity that keep readers turning pages. Underlying all the adventures is the longing for elusive true family life.-Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
This delicious ramble picks up a year after My One Hundred Adventures (2008) left off, and Jane Fielding, now 13, isn't just dreaming of having adventures but is experiencing a doozy of one. The family has had to flee Saskatchewan because her flighty stepfather Ned was fired, so Jane finds herself on the road with him, her dreamy, curiously checked-out poet mom, three younger siblings and a possibly hot bag of cash that needs unloading. Plot plays second fiddle to Jane's brilliant, dryly humorous musings about everything from Canadian winter to place memory to the talents of a diner waitress, but there's plenty of intrigue to keep the pages turning, including a visit to a First Nation village, a Las Vegas diversion and a trip to Ned's mother's horse ranch, where Jane, mortifyingly, falls for an indifferent wrangler. Jane's observations of her quirky, likable family are comical but compassionate, and her perennial penchant for adventureunlike Ned'sis always tempered by her attachment to her Massachusetts home. A detour-rich road trip well worth the ride. (Fiction. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
We Become Outlaws Our family lasted almost one year in Saskatchewan. It took the town that long to figure out that Ned didn't speak any French. "I always looked on it as kind of a frill," he explains to my mother. "French?" "Teaching," says Ned. "I coach the girls' basketball team and keep real good order in the classroom, so the kids don't, you know, go out and smoke in the hallways, at least during class time, and I always help out at assemblies. I was the one who rustled up some World War Two veterans for Remembrance Day. Remember, Jane, the knack I had with the veterans?" "Knack with the veterans?" asks my mother. She seems stunned by recent events. "You don't want them drooling on their shoes. And you want them to look like they're having fun even if they've forgotten what they're doing there. It takes a certain deft touch," says Ned. "So you didn't think knowing French was really so important?" My mother is trying just desperately to understand Ned's point of view. "Not in the general scheme of things," says Ned cheerfully. "Well!" says my mother. "Are they angry?" "Oh, livid," says Ned. "I guess they want you to resign?" asks my mother. My heart leaps up at the thought of leaving this crummy little house on the edge of town where we have lived for the last year. None of us have warmed to Saskatchewan. We moved here from Massachusetts the summer before when my mother married Ned, who got a full-time job here. His first full-time job ever. But it turns out that there is more to life than this. The town has financed this house for us but at great cost. There is no one very rich in town but still we are despised and pitied for the charity they afford us, giving us this house and lending us this furniture. I have no friends here. It is rumored we get our clothes off the dump. I don't mind so much for me but it is very hard on Maya, who has never had her own friends and wants some desperately. She has one so-called friend named Katie, who lords it over Maya and her poverty-stricken state. She is always saying things like she will give Maya her dolls when she outgrows them, knowing full well that by that time Maya will have outgrown them too. We are not really so poverty-stricken. We have not had chicken and rice without the chicken once since moving. There is always food and heat. But whereas back in Massachusetts our house on the beach carried some cachet, it is different here. No one cares that my mother is a poet. Once at a school dessert night one of the moms asked me what my mother did for a living and when I said she was a poet the mom replied, "Don't worry, she'll get over that." I know that none of this bothers my mother but I am bothered on her account. The only thing that has given us any respectability is Ned's position as the new French teacher. "Resign? Are you kidding? They fired me. Darn shortsighted. You know I was one of only two male teachers in the whole frigging town," says Ned. "Oh no!" says my mother. She looks so stricken that Ned and I glance at each other. But then the stricken feeling leaves her eyes and in its place I see the warm glow of possibilities. "But maybe," she goes on slowly, "this is a blessing in disguise. Now after the school year closes we can go back to Massachusetts. In the back of our minds, we always had that as a place to return." I am not so sure that this was as true for Ned, and I snap my head back around to look for his response. His eyes are flickering, full of thought, but moving too quickly for me to detect anything definite. My mother's eyes are quiet, still waters running Excerpted from Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.