One of my first book reviews was for The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart. One of my all-time favorite books, I have never read a more hopeful, beautiful and life-affirming middle-grade book. Wonderfully, the sequel, Coyote Lost and Found is out now. Dan Gemeinhart joins in our new Three Favorites Feature. He focuses on his three favorite middle-grade journey novels.
So, what are Dan Gemeinhart’s three favorite remarkable journey stories?
I love journey stories. I mean, I love almost any kind of story. But the kind of stories that grab me the hardest and don’t let go until The End are stories where the hero has to go on a journey. A road trip. A pilgrimage. A quest.
I, of course, am not alone. From The Odyssey to Don Quixote to Huckleberry Finn to Station Eleven, people have always loved journey stories.
My newest middle grade book, Coyote Lost and Found, is a follow-up to my award-winning 2019 novel The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Both are stories about identity and family and friendship and adventure and grief…but both are also rollicking road trip journey stories. So, in honor of that, I’m very happy to share three of my favorite middle grade Remarkable Journey stories that you should definitely pack on your next adventure.
The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
This gripping tale is set in Pakistan and India just after the Partition in 1947, when conflict, violence and bloodshed forced thousands of people to flee their homes to seek safety elsewhere. Our hero, twelve-year old Nisha, is one of those refugees. Half-Hindu and half-Muslim, her father fears they will not be safe in the newly-formed nation of Pakistan. Desperate, they embark on a harrowing, heartbreaking journey to find a new home. Besides being a gripping and beautifully told story, The Night Diary also shines a light on a chapter of history that is little-known to most American readers.
The Mad Wolf’s Daughter by Diane Magras
The Mad Wolf’s Daughter by Diane Magras is a rip-roaring, no-holds-barred epic journey adventure set in the hard-scrabble world of medieval Scotland. Drest, our plucky hero, finds herself utterly alone one night when her father and brothers – a feared war-band – are taken prisoner by a group of knights. She sets off on a nail-biting, heart-pounding quest to find and free them. This story has everything: witches, sword-fights, hostages, twists, battles, haunted villages…and a heroine you will root for every page of the way.
Train I Ride by Paul Mosier
All aboard for heartache…and for humanity, and hope, and healing. Rydr is a girl on a journey, and not one that she asked for. Her grandmother can no longer take care of her, so she’s put on a train to a city she’s never been to, in search of a place she can call a home. She starts the journey hopelessly alone, but as the train rolls along she begins to connect with her fellow travelers. Through those connections, she begins to reckon with the trauma that sparked her journey in the first place. This is poignantly revealed to the reader mile by mile. Moving, triumphant, and big-hearted, this book left me a smiling, blubbering mess in the best possible way.
Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart is available now in Hardcover, audiobook and e-book.
Featured image designed by Jon Negroni. Read more articles by Brianna Robinson here.
Brianna Robinson is a book publicist and Sarah Lawrence College alum. She lives in New York with too many books and two enthusiastic dachshunds. You can find her on twitter @blrobins2.
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