Middle of Nowhere

by Caroline Adderson

Overview

Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, shortlisted for the CLA Book of the Year for Children Award and the Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, and selected as an OLA Best Bet for 2012

At first Curtis isn't that worried when his mother doesn't come home from her all-night job at the local gas bar. She'll be back, he's ten out of ten positive. After all, she promised she would never leave him again.

Besides, Curtis is used to looking after himself and his five-year-old brother, Artie, and for a time he manages things on his own, keeping their mother's absence a secret. He knows exactly what will happen if any of the teachers find out the truth. He remembers his last horrible foster home all too clearly.

Curtis gets pretty good at forging his mother's signature, but when the credit card maxes out and the landlord starts pressuring for the rent, it's more than a twelve-year-old can handle. Just in time, Curtis and Artie make friends with Mrs. Burt, the cranky, lonely old lady who lives across the street. And when the authorities start to investigate, the boys agree to go with Mrs. Burt to her remote cabin by the lake, and the three of them abscond in her 1957 Chevy Bel Air.

At the lake, the boys' days are filled with wood-chopping, outhouse-building, fishing, swimming and Mrs. Burt's wonderful cooking. But as the summer sails by, Curtis can't stop thinking about his mother's promise.

Then the weather grows colder, and Mrs. Burt seems to be preparing to spend the winter at the cabin, and Curtis starts to worry.

Have they really all just absconded to the lake for a summer holiday? Or have the two boys been kidnapped?

Set in Vancouver and the B.C. wilderness (the trip to the cabin involves a hilarious white-knuckled road trip through Hope), this is a book that reflects Caroline Adderson's many writerly strengths -- her "wit and a facility for dialogue, good pacing and a brisk, clean prose style" (Globe and Mail), her "close observation of telling details" (Quill&Quire) and her ability to "celebrate a child’s imagination in a realistically humorous way" (Canadian Materials).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554982028
Publisher:	Groundwood Books Ltd
Publication date:	03/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
Lexile:	640L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

CAROLINE ADDERSON is an author of books for young readers and adults. Her picture books include Norman, Speak! (illustrated by Qin Leng) and the Pierre&Paul series (illustrated by Alice Carter). Early chapter books include the Jasper John Dooley and Izzy series, as well as Babble! And How Punctuation Saved It (illustrated by Roman Muradov). Caroline has won the Sheila Egoff Award, the Chocolate Lily Book Award and the Diamond Willow Award, among many other honors. She lives in Vancouver, B.C.

Read an Excerpt

“Do you understand now, boys, why I can’t ever go into an old folks’ home? Who would help me with my gas?”
“The nurses,” I said.
“Ha. They won’t. They’ll put me in diapers and leave me in the corner.”
“You’re too old for diapers, Mrs. Burt,” Artie said.
“Darn right I am.”
“Who patted your back before we came along?” I asked her.
“Nobody,” Mrs. Burt said. “It was very painful.”
We got quiet after she said that. Even Artie understood how sad it was that Mrs. Burt lived all alone, far from her daughter the Big Shot who just wanted to put her in a home for old people and not help her with her gas. He wrapped his skinny arms around her and Mrs. Burt squeezed him back.
In a quavery voice, she told us, “But I got you now, don’t I? We’re helping each other out.”

Editorial Reviews

“'Do you understand now, boys, why I can’t ever go into an old folks’ home? Who would help me with my gas?'
'The nurses,' I said.
'Ha. They won’t. They’ll put me in diapers and leave me in the corner.'
'You’re too old for diapers, Mrs. Burt,' Artie said.
'Darn right I am.'"
— from the book

From the Publisher

A mother who disappears, two brothers left alone and a seemingly kindly neighbor make up the ingredients of this unsuccessful story about troubled families. Eleven-year-old Curtis has always helped care for his little brother while their mother works and attends school. Now she has not come home, rent is due and food is running out. Haunted by memories of a horrible foster-care family with whom he stayed the first time his mother left him, Curtis fears that he will be separated from his little brother. Then strange but kindly Mrs. Burt, who lives across the street, offers money and meals. When she takes them to a remote lakeside cabin in British Columbia for the summer, Curtis is slowly drawn into this brave new world of chopping wood, building an outhouse and fishing. In truth, Mrs. Burt has "absconded" with the children because she mourns her son who drowned in the lake 40 years ago. Curtis' mother has not run off but has been badly injured and is lying in a coma. In a few pages of the finale, the narrative flow abruptly wraps up, leaving too many loose ends and unanswered questions. Curtis' first-person narration necessarily limits readers' access to the puzzle, and his easy acceptance of the big reveal strains credulity. The elements of a good story are present, but its telling lacks resonance, character development and depth of understanding. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews