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Wendelin Van Draanen

“Whats wrong with me?”In the book Runaway, by Wendelin Van Draanen, Holly has been moved from foster home to foster home. After running away from her fifth foster home due to poor treatment, Holly, a twelve year old orphan, travels across the country and keeps a journal of her experiences and struggle to survive on her way from the other side of the county to California. Her mom had died while Holly was still young, and Holly was forced to go to counseling. Holly liked one of families she lived with but she still ran away because she just wanted to be with her mother. Most of the families that she moved in with were very abusive, though. The family would seem nice when her social worker would come and look at the house but once she left, Holly would be put though hell. After her social worker stopped believing her when she told on her families, she resorted to running away. Everywhere she went people kept trying to turn her in to Social Services because they declared her missing. On her journey she would hitchhike, steal, stow-away, and lie. She would get harassed, beaten, sexually assaulted/abused and starved.

Only twelve and alone in the world.

I grew up in a small town far away from anything the city. I lived with my grandma and grandpa, dad, and 14 dogs. The house was a good size but it was very hard to get privacy, even in the bathroom it was hard. This book expresses my feelings and how I pictured it when people run away. I always wanted to runaway to California but I never had the guts. This book is basically what I felt like doing ever night of my teen years. I wrote this book to express the dangers of living on your own at a young age. Its a very bad idea.

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Like/dislikes:

I thought this book was very well written. The book was broken up into entries, sometimes Holly would write two or more entries in one day or one really long one. I liked the style of writing. When you're writing in a journal you don't need to write down the surroundings because you're already there. When you write in a journal about your day you write down what happened that day not all the little surrounding details. She would simply give general descriptions of where she was and what was going on.

Recommendation:

I would recommend this book to mainly girls. It's touching and heartbreaking all in one, and sometimes all at once. It has to do with love, loss, pain, and escape. I don't think guys would appreciate this book because it has to do with girl's feelings and drama. This book reminds me of books on homeless people, people who survive wars or disasters, books based on orphans and runaways and even people who are stuck someplace needing to survive like; The Diary of Anne Frank, The Blind Side and many others.

"I wipe away my tears and nod, because the pain in my leg is nothing compare to the one in my heart."

"She was married to my dad, and everything was fine until he got killed in some freak tractor accident. Yeah, that’s what I said, a freak tractor accident."

"Street people use cardboard all the time, and bum alleys are just shanties or lean-tos, though. They’re nothing like my house! Mine is deluxe! It’s a big, thick, super sturdy refrigerator box that I found at an appliance store!"

Wendelin Van Draanen (born January 6, 1965, Chicago, Illinois) is an American author of children's books. She lives in California with her husband Mark Parsons and two sons, Colton and Connor. The daughter of chemists who emigrated to the U.S. from Holland, she worked as a math teacher and then as a high school computer science teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her books feature spunky lead characters and very real classroom dialogue. Van Draanen is probably best-known for her Sammy Keyes series of novels, featuring a teenage detective named Samantha ("Sammy") Keyes. Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief won the 1999 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery. In 2004-2005 Van Draanen wrote a four-book series for younger readers called Shredderman, about a 5th grade boy who assumes a secret identity to help him win the battle for truth and justice. These two series manage to be character driven and very funny while featuring fast-paced plots. Van Draanen also wrote the standalone teen romance Flipped in a he-said she-said style with the two protagonists alternately presenting their perspective on a shared set of events. Her book, Runaway, is about a girl named Holly who tries to escape from her latest foster home. He latest book that was released December 2008, is Sammy Keyes and the Hard Cash. Van Draanen, is working on the 13th book currently.

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