The Last Grand Adventure by Rebecca Behrens (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The Last Grand Adventure by Rebecca Behrens
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-9692-6 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-9694-0 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 5-7
It’s 1967, and Bea’s visit with Pidge, the grandmother she barely knows, has turned into a secret journey from California to Iowa. Not only is the trip slapdash (they stow away on a sleeper train, scramble for long-distance buses, and cadge rides where [End Page 279] possible), the mission is a questionable one: Pidge is the sister of Amelia Earhart, and she’s convinced that Amelia is still alive and will meet her at their childhood home. Normally unadventurous twelve-year-old Bea (“I left my adventure journal empty and my worry journal full”) is a sympathetic narrator as she frets about her place in her newly blended family and her grandmother’s wavering memory. The tantalizing thread of possibility about Amelia Earhart and the letters she—or somebody—has been writing to Pidge adds alluring mystery. The book ladles on too much improbability, though, in the pair’s travels, even throwing in some heroic emergency plane piloting for Pidge, and the lessons about Bea’s relationship with her younger stepsister are preachy and heavy handed. The illicit cross-country odyssey is colorful and the period details vivid, however, so kids longing for their own unexpected escape may still appreciate the journey. An author’s note includes information about Amelia Earhart and the 1960s; a bibliography is included.
