Help me remember this Incredible Journey starring kids

April 10, 2008 9:56 PM

BookFilter: Help me remember this book about 3 children who go on an "incredible journey" of sorts after their parents fail to pick them up from the hotel's daycare.

I read this book before 1983. It was a paperback with red edges. The kids are on vacation with their parents, who leave them at the hotel's daycare for the day. By dinner, their parents still haven't returned. The kids decide to go back home, several hundred miles away. The kids are 10, 8, and 6 or so. The eldest is the protagonist. She has a spare tire around her middle. The middle is a boy, perhaps named Brett or Shane. The youngest is a girl and named Brett or Shane (or some other name that I associated with a boy) -- and she likes steak and eggs. At the time, I thought the family was wealthy, but they were probably just middle class (which I was not!). The kids travel across the country/state/province, buying bologna and trapping a rabbit (and cooking it) along the way. I won't say anything else about the plot, in case someone wants to read it.

I always thought it was by the author of The Incredible Journey, but I can't find anything to prove that now. I've tried Amazon and Alibris, but I'm using the wrong keywords, I suspect. Any thoughts? Thanks!

posted by acoutu to grab bag (6 comments total)

Nb. "Spare tire" is the girl's description, not my editorial.
posted by acoutu at 10:14 PM on April 10

This sounds a lot like a book we read in elementary school.... except that they were at a shopping mall, and the mom had some kind of seizure and was whisked away in an ambulance, and for whatever reason they were left alone. They decide to walk to their Great Aunt's place. They go through Rhode Island and Connecticut and are taken in by a college student in New Haven. That's about all I remember. Sound familiar?

And after some magical Googling: It's called Homecoming. But there are key differences from your description so I don't know if it's the right book.
posted by PercussivePaul at 11:53 PM on April 10

Thanks, but, no, that's not the same book.
posted by acoutu at 11:57 PM on April 10

Could it be A Long Way to Go by Borden Deal?

Link to discussion.
posted by cda at 8:40 AM on April 11

Ah, that's it! Thank you. In the comments of that description, someone excerpted a description:

"The suspenseful and moving story of a six-hundred mile journey, and three children determined to reach their home.The children, Ashley , Brett, and Shane, had been waiting for their parents at the Florida motel. But, as the day began to fade and the supervisor of the play program glanced irritably at her wristwatch, the three children realized that something was terribly wrong. Their parents were not coming back."

Super!
posted by acoutu at 11:56 AM on April 11

In case someone needs bibliographic info: Deal, Borden. A Long Way to Go. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.
posted by acoutu at 11:59 AM on April 11