NORTHWARD TO THE MOON

This delicious ramble picks up a year after My One Hundred Adventures (2008) left off, and Jane Fielding, now 13, isn’t just dreaming of having adventures but is experiencing a doozy of one. The family has had to flee Saskatchewan because her flighty stepfather Ned was fired, so Jane finds herself on the road with him, her dreamy, curiously checked-out poet mom, three younger siblings and a possibly hot bag of cash that needs unloading. Plot plays second fiddle to Jane’s brilliant, dryly humorous musings about everything from Canadian winter to place memory to the talents of a diner waitress, but there’s plenty of intrigue to keep the pages turning, including a visit to a First Nation village, a Las Vegas diversion and a trip to Ned’s mother’s horse ranch, where Jane, mortifyingly, falls for an indifferent wrangler. Jane’s observations of her quirky, likable family are comical but compassionate, and her perennial penchant for adventure—unlike Ned’s—is always tempered by her attachment to her Massachusetts home. A detour-rich road trip well worth the ride. (Fiction. 12 & up)