Parked

For fans of Rebecca Stead and Joan Bauer comes a scrappy, poignant, uplifting debut about family, friendship, and the importance of learning both how to offer help and how to accept it. "A big-hearted novel with characters I wish were my friends in real life." --Gennifer Choldenko, author of the Al Capone at Alcatraz series Jeanne Ann is smart, stubborn, living in an orange van, and determined to find a permanent address before the start of seventh grade. Cal is tall, sensitive, living in a humongous house across the street, and determined to save her. Jeanne Ann is roughly as enthusiastic about his help as she is about living in a van. As the two form a tentative friendship that grows deeper over alternating chapters, they're buoyed by a cast of complex, oddball characters, who let them down, lift them up, and leave you cheering. Debut novelist Danielle Svetcov shines a light on a big problem without a ready answer, nailing heartbreak and hope, and pulling it off with a humor and warmth that make the funny parts of Jeanne Ann and Cal's story cathartic and the difficult parts all the more moving. "Insightful, touching...and timely...Not to be missed" --Karen Cushman, author of The Midwife's Apprentice "Absorbing and warmhearted...Readers will be transported" --Annie Barrows, author of the Ivy & Bean series "Pertinent....Honest...Uplifting...Fresh" --PW "Utterly of this moment" --Jack Cheng, author of See You in the Cosmos