The Runaways - Hardcover

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385325991 ISBN 13: 9780385325998

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 1999

Synopsis

Young readers will love the latest novel from three-time Newbery Honor winner Zilpha Keatley Snyder:

Dani O'Donnell can't wait to get out of her new home town, Rattler Springs, out in the middle of the desert.  All she wants to do is get back to California where she belongs.  So just before she turns 13, Dani plans her escape.  But things get complicated when 9-year-old Stormy wants to go, and so does the new rich girl in town, Pixie.  When this threesome finally resolves to go, they must face what running away really means, and the true reason they are going.

About this title

About the Author

Raised in California, in the country--with no television and few movies to watch--three-time Newbery Honor winner Zilpha Keatley Snyder filled her childhood with animals, games, and books. Among her earliest acquaintances were cows, goats, ducks, chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, and horses. In fact, her family's animals were her closest friends, and a nearby library was a constant source of magic, adventure, and excitement for her. And when she wasn't reading or playing with animals, Snyder made up games and stories to entertain herself.


While Zilpha Keatley Snyder was growing up, interesting stories filled her household. Both of her parents spent a lot of time relating accounts of past events in their lives, so Snyder came by her storytelling instincts early. But unlike her parents, when Zilpha had something to tell, she had, as she says, "an irresistible urge to make it worth telling. And without the rich and rather lengthy past that my parents had to draw on, I was forced to rely on the one commodity of which I had an adequate supply--imagination." Consequently, at the age of eight, Zilpha Keatley Snyder decided to become a writer.


As a student, Snyder was very proficient in reading and writing, and experienced few problems in the small country schools she attended until the end of sixth grade. But upon entering the seventh grade in the city of Ventura, she was, as she recalls, "suddenly a terrible misfit." Snyder retreated further into books and daydreams, and admits: "Book were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room, onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of them, even the smell. . . . Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing."


Snyder attended Whittier College in Southern California, where she says she "grew physically and socially as well as intellectually." There she also met her future husband, Larry Snyder. While ultimately planning to be a writer, after graduation Snyder decided to teach school temporarily. But she found teaching to be an extremely rewarding experience and taught in the upper elementary grades for a total of nine years, three of them as a master teacher for the University of California at Berkeley. Zilpha and Larry were married in June of 1950, and went on to have three children, Melissa, Douglas, and Ben.


In the early sixties, when all of her children were finally in school, Snyder began to think about writing again. "Writing for children hadn't occurred to me when I was younger, but nine years of teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human begins. Remembering a dream I'd had when I was twelve years old, about some strange and wonderful horses, I sat down and began to write."


Season of Ponies, Zilpha Keatley Snyder's first book, was published in 1964. Her most recent novel, Gib Rides Home, follows an orphan boy who shows strength and courage as he endures harsh treatment during his five years at the orphanage before he finds a family of his own. Gib's story is a tribute to the memory of Snyder's father who grew up in an orphanage in Oklahoma.


Zilpha Keatley Snyder's three Newbery Honor books are: The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm. Other books for Bantam Doubleday Dell are The Trespassers, an American Bookseller Pick of the List; Cat Running, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and winner of the 1995 John and Patricia Beatty Award; and her newest work, The Gypsy Game, companion to The Egypt Game.


Zilpha Keatley Snyder currently lives in Mill Valley, a small town near San Francisco. In her spare time, she loves reading and traveling, and of course, writing, which besides being her occupation has always been her favorite hobby.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Runaways:

*"Snyder (The Gypsy Game) pulls off another prestidigitation with this roundly satsfying story set in 1951....[T]he deepening view of the children's home lives and Dani's growing affection for Stormy and Pixie prove steadily more engrossing. Even the minor characters seem to have lives off the page."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[T]his is an intriguing tale, with believable characters. Pixie, in particular, is a character worthy of a tale all her own."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Dani's pal Stormy is a richly drawn character with few words and rough gestures, an unforgettable portrait of a child whose life in heartbreakingly complicated."
--Booklist

Reviews

Grade 4-7-Three memorable would-be runaways are determined to escape parents who do not meet their emotional needs. Dani instigates the plan; she is a focused and imaginative 12-year-old who wants only to return to the California coast she and her mother left to claim an inheritance in a dusty, desert town. Her intentions are discovered by her friend Stormy, a needy nine-year-old who can't read well but has a voracious appetite for stories. Dani has grudgingly become his reader and, as she becomes aware of the growing abuse he suffers from his mother, even more grudgingly agrees to include him in her plans. Then Pixie and her wealthy geologist parents move onto the property Dani and her mother had inherited but found uninhabitable. As much of an outsider as Dani and Stormy, she pushes her way into a friendship with them. Neglected by her distracted though well-meaning parents, Pixie also wants to escape. An exciting desert drama results when the three attempt to put the plan into action. The book is set in the 1950s, and the dying town and desperate people are very real and touching. The plight of these creative and neglected children will keep readers turning the pages. Dani is the force of this novel, but Stormy is the heart, a boy who just can't be knocked down. The ending may be a bit contrived, but these characters deserve a "happily ever after" conclusion and readers will be glad they got it.
Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Snyder (The Gypsy Game) pulls off another feat of prestidigitation with this roundly satisfying story set in 1951. Coming from almost anyone else, the plot and cast of characters might sound stale: three smart kids?one resentful of her mother's passivity and bumbling; one neglected and abused by his mother; and one whose parents are too busy for her?decide to run away but then don't need to after all. Snyder, however, can invest her characters with inner resources that are both extreme and believable, and readers will gravitate to her protagonist, 12-year-old Dani O'Donnell, right from the opening scene in a graveyard. There Dani, shaking her fist in the air, vows to move away from the hateful desert town of Rattler Springs, where she and her well-meaning but seemingly inept mother have lived for four years. Her pesky, book-loving younger neighbor, Stormy Arigotti, blackmails Dani into agreeing to take him along, and while they are in the process of raising funds, they meet Pixie Smithson. The preternaturally self-possessed, truth-twisting daughter of a geologist couple doing a short project in Rattler Springs, Pixie soon enlists in the running-away plan too. The trio's strategies for escape are only the most superficial sources of tension here; the deepening view of the children's home lives and Dani's growing affection for Stormy and Pixie prove steadily more engrossing. Even the minor characters here seem to have lives off the page. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4^-8. No one actually runs away, in this story, though 12-year-old Dani O'Donnell spends a lot of time and energy planning how she will do it. She hates the desert town and misses Sea Grove, the California town she and her mother left when they inherited an old ranch in 1951. The ranch has neither electricity nor plumbing, so they rent a place in town, where Dani's mom works in a bookstore and loses herself in reading. Dani is angry at her mother, at the bleak town, at the relentless weather, and often at Stormy, a nine-year -old dyslexic boy, who hangs around them. Then a geologist couple burst into town with odd daughter Pixie and set up shop--and a generator--at the O'Donnell spread. Pixie boldly insinuates herself into Stormy's and Dani's lives and proclaims her own reasons for wanting to run away. There are too many strands in this occasionally overwrought story, which paradoxically moves rather sluggishly: child abuse, a professional couple who can't quite get the knack of child raising, a wicked landlord whose son is the local bully. But Dani's pal Stormy is a richly drawn character with few words and rough gestures, an unforgettable portrait of a child whose life is heartbreakingly complicated. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"So," Dani said. "That's our reasons for running away. Now, how about you?"

"Me?" For just a split second Pixie looked like she was trying to think what to say, or maybe decide whether she ought to say it. But then her eyes did that quick flash of fire thing, and biting her lip, she nodded slowly. "Yesss," she said, drawing it out to a sizzle. "See, it's very important that I run away soon before something terrible happens. Something unbelievably terrible." She turned to Stormy. "I think Stormy can guess why I have to run away. Can't you, Stormy? Can't you guess why I have to run away as soon as I possibly can?"

Stormy didn't answer. Instead he only did the embarrassed squirmy thing that usually meant he'd been up to no good. Dani was sure she recognized Stormy's guilty expression, but she couldn't imagine what he was guilty of that had anything to do with why Pixie had to run away. But then he said, "I didn't ask her about it. She just told me." Dani began to get the picture.

She stared at Pixie, "What did you tell Stormy?"

"Well," Pixie said. "You know that rumor about the machine my parents took up to the ranch?"

"What machine?"

"You know. The one on the big truck?"

"Yeah?" Dani had a horrible feeling that she knew what Pixie was driving at and where the conversation was headed, but she didn't intend to help it get there. She knew Pixie wanted her to ask what the machine was really for, but she wasn't going to do it. If Pixie wanted to say that her parents had a machine for making monsters out of dead people she was going to have to do it on her own, without any help from Dani. No help from Danielle O'Donnell, who didn't believe in any crazy stuff like that. Particularly crazy stuff about Frankenstein monsters. So "Yeah?" was all she had to say.

Pixie nodded, and repeated, "Yeah." The nod was slow and solemn but the blue-fire flashes were constant now. "Why do you suppose they wanted to live way out there anyway, where no one could see what they're up to? Did you ever think about that?"

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385325991
• ISBN 13: 9780385325998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256