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Louisiana's Way Home Hardcover – October 2, 2018
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From two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo comes the New York Times bestselling story of discovering who you are — and deciding who you want to be.
When Louisiana Elefante’s granny wakes her up in the middle of the night to tell her that the day of reckoning has arrived and they have to leave home immediately, Louisiana isn’t overly worried. After all, Granny has many middle-of-the-night ideas. But this time, things are different. This time, Granny intends for them never to return. Separated from her best friends, Raymie and Beverly, Louisiana struggles to oppose the winds of fate (and Granny) and find a way home. But as Louisiana’s life becomes entwined with the lives of the people of a small Georgia town — including a surly motel owner, a walrus-like minister, and a mysterious boy with a crow on his shoulder — she starts to worry that she is destined only for good-byes. (Which could be due to the curse on Louisiana's and Granny’s heads. But that is a story for another time.)
Called “one of DiCamillo’s most singular and arresting creations” by The New York Times Book Review, the heartbreakingly irresistibleLouisiana Elefante was introduced to readers in Raymie Nightingale — and now, with humor and tenderness, Kate DiCamillo returns to tell her story.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level5 - 6
- Lexile measure630L
- Dimensions5.82 x 0.85 x 8.01 inches
- PublisherCandlewick
- Publication dateOctober 2, 2018
- ISBN-100763694630
- ISBN-13978-0763694630
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From the Publisher
"DiCamillo offers a master class in how to tell and shape a story." —Booklist (starred review)
"A thoughtful and finely written story that earns its place among DiCamillo’s other beloved novels." —School Library Journal (starred review)
"For readers who relish thoughtfully constructed plots, well-developed characters, and carefully crafted language, this will be a special treat."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Populated with unforgettable characters, including kindhearted adults who recognize Louisiana’s dire situation and offer options, this bittersweet novel shows a deep understanding of children’s emotions and celebrates their resiliency." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Also by Kate DiCamillo
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A Newbery Medal Winner"A terrific, bravura performance." – The New York Times Book Review |
A Newbery Medal Winner"Eccentric characters, snappy prose and the fantastical plot give this delightful novel a giddy, over-the-top patina, but the core is big and hopeful, contemplative and bursting with heart. No small feat, even for a superhero like DiCamillo."—Shelf Awareness. |
A National Book Award FinalistAs in her previous award-winning books, DiCamillo once again shows that life’s underlying sadnesses can also be studded with hope and humor, and does it in a way so true that children will understand it in their bones. And that’s why she’s Kate the Great."—Booklist (starred review). |
A 2001 Newbery Honor Book |
Editorial Reviews
Review
—The New York Times Book Review
DiCamillo offers a master class in how to tell and shape a story once all fat has been cut away. Though set in the mid-1970s, there’s fairy-tale quality to this, with heroes, helpers, villains, and one princess looking for home.
—Booklist (starred review)
Readers who first encountered Louisiana in Raymie Nightingale (2016) will be heartened to learn more about her...For readers who relish thoughtfully constructed plots, well-developed characters, and carefully crafted language, this will be a special treat.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
DiCamillo builds a resilient and sympathetic character in Louisiana, and the juxtaposition of her down-to-earth observations with Granny’s capriciousness lightens the narrative and allows for a good deal of humor...The overarching themes addressing forgiveness, love, friendship, acceptance, home, and family (“Perhaps what matters when all is said and done is not who puts us down but who picks us up”) ring honest and true.
—The Horn Book (starred review)
Populated with unforgettable characters, including kindhearted adults who recognize Louisiana’s dire situation and offer options, this bittersweet novel shows a deep understanding of children’s emotions and celebrates their resiliency. Readers will feel as much empathy for Louisiana as they did for her friend Raymie.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
DiCamillo is able to address complex topics in an accessible and ultimately hopeful way. There is never sadness without comfort, fear without consolation. Louisiana’s soul-searching is no exception and further solidifies DiCamillo’s reputation as a skilled storyteller who trusts her readers to wrestle with hard things. A thoughtful and finely written story that earns its place among DiCamillo’s other beloved novels.
—School Library Journal (starred review)
The tale is...gently told, as much fairy tale as realistic story, in language that’s lovely in its plainspoken illuminations, with the focus on Louisiana’s longing for connection and observations about the people she encounters on the road and in the small 1970s Georgia town. Ultimately this is a deeply sweet but not saccharine take on the old story of an orphan child lost and found, and readers won’t have to know the first book to bond with Louisiana and wish fervently for her to find a home.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)
DiCamillo's funny and hugely likable Louisiana has a marvelous way with words and a spirit that will not rest until she finds her way home, wherever that may be…Louisiana, one of the trio of friends from Kate DiCamillo's Raymie Nightingale, returns in her own beautiful, bittersweet middle-grade stand-alone about finding her home... and herself.
—Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review)
In this funny yet philosophical melodrama, 12-year old Louisiana Elefante recalls her identity crisis, forced when eccentric Granny claims “a date with destiny."...Disparate elements miraculously mesh — stars, smiles, magic, bologna sandwiches, a pet crow and cakes. Here, a two-time Newbery award winner brilliantly guides the dear Louisiana through lies, secrets, anger and abandonment and toward understanding, belonging, gratitude and forgiveness.
—San Francisco Chronicle
Almost effortlessly, DiCamillo explores some of the biggest, most important questions of life — What is home? What is family? Who decides what kind of person we get to be? — in this deceivingly simple and profoundly moving novel.
—Star Tribune
DiCamillo peoples her tale with colorful, unforgettable characters, although brave,thoughtful, kind Louisiana is the most memorable of all. Young as she is, Louisiana knows to appreciate rare moments of grace and kindness ("there is goodness in many hearts": the gas station clerk who gives her free bags of peanuts, a woman in the dentist's waiting room who gives her a tin of chocolate chip cookies), and she understands the healing power of forgiveness.
—Buffalo News
‘You are not alone in the world,’ reads the grandmother’s farewell letter in ‘Louisiana’s Way Home’ (Candlewick, 227 pages, $16.99), Kate DiCamillo’s tender, sorrowful, life-embracing sequel to her 2016 novel, ‘Raymie Nightingale.’
—The Wall Street Journal
This poignant story of loss echoes with themes of hope and redemption.
—World Magazine
DiCamillo's genius is finding comedy in tragedy, humanity in darkness. Here, the spirited Louisiana Elefante meets loss head on and finds a way home.
—Scholastic Teacher
In Kate DiCamillo’s beautiful follow-up to Raymie Nightingale, Louisiana Elefante is back...The book strikes a delicate balance between relating a charming, entertaining story full of colorful characters and imparting a deeply meaningful life lesson about deciding what kind of person to be.
—ForeWord Reviews
DiCamillo reveals the strength and fight in Louisiana...once again Louisiana finds just the right people to help ground her.
—NPR Books
This is a marvelous book, full of heart but without a drop of cheap sentimentality. . . . What a pleasure it is to read a story in which the author’s faith in the goodness of ‘average’ people is set forth with such vigor and confidence. This celebration of kindness is itself a kindness to the reader and an encouragement to hope.
—Dean Koontz, bestselling author
I really really like Louisiana’s Way Home, a slim, handsome novel about grace.
—Betsy Bird, A Fuse #8 Production (blog)
I will read anything Kate DiCamillo writes; the two-time Newbery medalist never disappoints with her stories for younger readers. Her latest finely-crafted tale follows 12-year-old Louisiana Elefante through an unforgettable fable about grace, hardships and discovery.
—Aspen Daily News
It’s hard to imagine this story being told in any other way than through the words and unique viewpoint of Louisiana herself. The characters wouldn’t come to life in the same way, the setting would be ordinary, and the plot might not be compelling.
—Heavy Medal (blog)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I am going to write it all down, so that what happened to me will be known, so that if someone were to stand at their window at night and look up at the stars and think, My goodness, whatever happened to Louisiana Elefante? Where did she go?they will have an answer. They will know.
This is what happened.
I will begin at the beginning.
. . .
The beginning is that my great-grandfather was a magician, and long, long ago he set into motion a most terrible curse.
But right now you do not need to know the details of the terrible curse. You only need to know that it exists and that it is a curse that has been passed down from generation to generation.
It is, as I said, a terrible curse.
And now it has landed upon my head.
Keep that in mind.
We left in the middle of the night.
Granny woke me up. She said, “The day of reckoning has arrived. The hour is close at hand. We must leave immediately.”
It was three a.m.
We went out to the car and the night was very dark, but the stars were shining brightly.
Oh, there were so many stars!
And I noticed that some of the stars had arranged themselves into a shape that looked very much like someone with a long nose telling a lie — the Pinocchio constellation!
I pointed out the starry Pinocchio to Granny, but she was not at all interested. “Hurry, hurry,” said Granny. “There is no time for stargazing. We have a date with destiny.”
So I got in the car and we drove away.
I did not think to look behind me.
How could I have known that I was leaving for good?
I thought that I was caught up in some middle-of-the-night idea of Granny’s and that when the sun came up, she would think better of the whole thing.
This has happened before.
Granny has many middle-of-the-night ideas.
I fell asleep and when I woke up, we were still driving. The sun was coming up, and I saw a sign that said Georgia: 20 miles.
Georgia!
We were about to change states, and Granny was still driving as fast as she could, leaning close to the windshield because her eyesight is not very good and she is too vain to wear glasses, and also because she is very short (shorter, almost, than I am) and she has to lean close to reach the gas pedal.
In any case, the sun was bright. It was lighting up the splotches and stains on the windshield and making them look like glow-in-the-dark stars that someone had pasted there as a surprise for me.
I love stars.
Oh, how I wish that someone had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on our windshield!
However, that was not the case.
I said, “Granny, when are we going to turn around and go back home?”
Granny said, “We are never going to turn around, my darling. The time for turning around has ended.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because the hour of reckoning has arrived,” said Granny in a very serious voice, “and the curse at last must be confronted.”
“But what about Archie?”
At this point in my account of what became of me, it is necessary for you to know that Archie is my cat and that Granny has taken him from me before.
Yes, taken! It is truly a tragic tale. But never mind about that.
“Provisions have been made,” said Granny.
“What sort of provisions?”
“The cat is in good hands,” said Granny.
Well, this was what Granny had said to me the last time she took Archie, and I did not like the sound of her words one bit.
Also, I did not believe her.
It is a dark day when you do not believe your granny.
It is a day for tears.
I started to cry.
. . .
I cried until we crossed over the Florida-Georgia state line.
But then something about the state line woke me up. State lines can do that. Maybe you understand what I am talking about and maybe you don’t. All I can say is that I had a sudden feeling of irrevocableness and I thought, I have to get out of this car. I have to go back.
So I said, “Granny, stop the car.”
And Granny said, “I will do no such thing.”
Granny has never listened to other people’s instructions. She has never heeded anyone’s commands. She is the type of person who tells other people what to do, not vice versa.
But in the end, it didn’t matter that Granny refused to stop the car, because fate intervened.
And by that I mean to say that we ran out of gas.
. . .
If you have not left your home in the middle of the night without even giving it a backward glance; if you have not left your cat and your friends and also a one-eyed dog named Buddy without getting to tell any of them good-bye; if you have not stood on the side of the road in Georgia, somewhere just past the irrevocable state line, and waited for someone to come along and give you a ride, well, then you cannot understand the desperation that was in my heart that day.
Which is exactly why I am writing all of this down.
So that you will understand the desperation — the utter devastation — in my heart.
And also, as I said at the beginning, I am writing it down for somewhat more practical matters.
And those more practical matters are so that you will know what happened to me — Louisiana Elefante.
Product details
- Publisher : Candlewick (October 2, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0763694630
- ISBN-13 : 978-0763694630
- Reading age : 9 - 11 years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 630L
- Grade level : 5 - 6
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.82 x 0.85 x 8.01 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #253,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #206 in Children's Books on Orphans & Foster Homes
- #887 in Children's Multigenerational Family Life
- #4,726 in Children's Friendship Books
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Kate DiCamillo’s writing journey has been a truly remarkable one. She grew up in Florida and moved to Minnesota in her twenties, when homesickness and a bitter winter led her to write Because of Winn-Dixie — her first published novel, which became a runaway bestseller and snapped up a Newbery Honor. The Tiger Rising, her second novel, was also set in Florida and went on to become a National Book Award finalist. Since then, the best-selling author has explored settings as varied as a medieval castle and a magician’s theater while continuing to enjoy great success, winning two Newbery Medals and being named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She now has over 40 million books in print worldwide.
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If you met Louisiana in real life you would quickly ascertain that she is a unique personality. She would tell you the story of her parents—trapeze artists—who died in a shipwreck. She can’t be called a liar or fanciful for her family history as it’s the story her grandmother told her. She accepts it without question. She will tell you that she suffers from a “curse of sundering.” This is a curse where you are destined to constantly be separated from those you love. This isn’t tragical romanticizing on her part. She sincerely believes it. When a stranger sees her behind the wheel of a car and asks her if she should be driving (she is just 12 years old, after all), she answers:
“Yes, I should be driving. The situation is dire!”
You may think she is being overly dramatic speaking this way, but if your grandma had abducted you from your home in the middle of the night saying, “The day of reckoning has come!” and who is now lying in the back seat of the car incapacitated with a toothache and you are driving a car for the first time through a strange town in a neighboring state looking for a dentist, you might speak the same way. No, Louisiana is an unusual girl, with an unusual history, in unusual circumstances that makes her different from anyone else you might ever meet. Because of her unusualness, she is a girl I desperately want to meet.
The question is, do I really want to meet a girl like Louisiana Elefante, or is it just a nice idea. There are many in the book who are not pleased to meet a girl like her. The dentist’s receptionist is only concerned about running a strict schedule and not helping a desperately sick grandma. The motel owner is focused only on payment and not on human beings who have been caught in a very difficult situation. These are truly unlikable, even mean, people who don’t realize how miserable they are. But with these unhappy people we meet human beings who give the rest of us hope. One of these is the greasy gas station owner who seems unresponsive to Louisiana’s chatter, but seems to read her soul. Seeing her eyeing the packages of peanuts on a rack on the counter he tells her, “You can have as many as you want. No charge.” When she takes sixteen packages (Louisiana is legitimately half starved at all times) the man just smiles. She meets other people even kinder.
The tragedy of Louisiana’s life caught me off-guard. When she, while tears fall quietly from her eyes onto the couch in the living room of near strangers, says, “I don’t know who I am,” only the reader fully understands the depth of her words. To experience the revelation that Louisiana, a fictional character experiences and feel the feelings she feels, is a testimony to the power of fiction. No TED talk would come close to getting me to understand what it’s like to be in Louisiana’s position. I love these powerful literary moments.
Kate DiCamillo is a proponent of hope for the human race. Louisiana’s Way Home written by many others would most likely be dark and depressing. If not dark and depressing, it would be silly and saccharine. DiCamillo, in my opinion, walks the fine line between the two—a fine line the follows the goodness that really can be found in the hearts of human beings. Along with the miserably mean people Louisiana encounters (people who are probably more like us than we want to believe) she lands among the beautiful people of our race who make me proud to be a human being. These are people who I want to be like—something DiCamillo helps me believe can really be.
Louisiana’s Way Home brings to life the kind of girl who I would find annoying in real life, but manages to show me the rare beauty behind the annoyance. It makes me feel special because I feel like I am one of the chosen few who become a friend of Louisiana and that makes me unique, like she is.
I liked this book and I think 5th and 6th grade girls will find it inspiring and fun. Author Kate DiCamillo has a solid track record with other award-winning books, and she hits the mark again with this one.
DiCamillo continues her story that she started in Nightingale, this time with a focus on Louisiana Elafonte. Fantastic character development and a tender touch on the things of life make DiCamillo's books stand out from the usual middle fiction. In my mind, she stands with Gary Schmidt and E.L. Kongisburg as my top children's book authors. Louisiana's Way Home is more excellent material from her.
(apologies for any misspellings -- I've had the book read aloud to me! My wife is great)