Marvelous Middle Grade Monday: The Long Way Around, by Anne Nesbet

I'm posting today with the fantastic Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays blog hop hosted by Greg Pattrige of Always in the Middle. Check out Greg's blog for a list of additional middle grade reviews. I've been discovering some great reads there--like the one I'm reviewing today.

 

Title: The Long Way Around

Author: Anne Nesbet

Publication Info: Candlewick Press, 2024. 185 pages (Kindle edition)

Source:  Library

Publisher's Blurb:*

During a hiking trip with their parents in the mountains of California, cousins Owen, Vivian, and Amy are finally allowed to camp for one night at a little lake all on their own. But when a massive earthquake blocks their return path, there’s only one way: the long way around, through a wilderness filled with fierce animals, raging rivers, unstable weather, and high passes. The hardest challenges the cousins face, however, are the troubles they’ve brought with them: bold Vivian’s fear of starting middle school and of changes she can’t control, Owen’s lingering emotional scars from a car accident, and Amy’s desire to live in stories rather than in boring regular life. Drawing on courage and humor, the cousins weather storms, make the most of dwindling rations, and face their deepest fears in order to bring each other safely home. This gripping contemporary novel from celebrated author Anne Nesbet is bursting with excitement, rich natural settings, and characters who will have readers rooting for them all the way.

My Review:
Let's get the worrisome bit out of the way right up front: kids' books tend to need to get the parents out of the way if the kids are meant to have a real adventure without adult interference. The author chose to do that by having the parents in this case let our three protagonists spend a couple of backpacking nights without the grownups, leaving the parents on the other side of a pass from the kids. Would most parents do that? No. Would I have done that? Well, when my kids were 12, or thereabouts, I might have, if they'd wanted to, though honestly they'd not at that point shown any interest in learning to use the stove or doing their own cooking. I would not have let two 12-year-olds have charge of an 8-year-old in the backcountry, and I've been accused of being an insufficiently watchful parent.

All that long paragraph serves to say, the set-up for the story has some issues. But once we ditch the parents and the adventures begin, it's first-rate! One thing I look for in any book about hiking and backpacking is how accurate and realistic the depictions of those activities are, and if the book suggests anything that might actually be a bad idea. I think that Anne Nesbet hit the mark on this one. The kids made realistic and maybe even reasonable decisions (though staying put is always better when you're in trouble out there, especially if you are only 12, they had good reasons to move on). They also managed realistic things, with about the right amount of exhaustion. 

I haven't hiked the exact trails they hiked, but I've been in the area enough to know the terrain, and that made it extra fun for me to follow their adventure on the map. In addition to the hiking story, there is a good subplot going on about each of the kids, especially the two older ones, dealing with their own personal demons, which are greatly helped (as I believe most things are) by their time in the wilderness.

My Recommendation:
I give this one two thumbs up, and think it is wholly suitable for kids from 8 up--there is nothing too scary or "adult" for younger children, but I think that kids moving on into and through middle school might also enjoy the adventure, and the independence of the kids.

*There seemed to be a few weird editing problems here, so I fixed the blurb with some punctuation.