Summary
Journey is eleven the summer his mother leaves him and his sister, Cat, with their grandparents. He is sad and angry, and spends the summer looking for the clues that will explain why she left.Journey searches photographs for answers. He hunts family resemblances in Grandma's albums. Looking for happier times, he tries to put together the torn pieces of the pictures his mother shredded before her departure. And he also searches the photographs his grandfather takes as the older man attempts to provide Journey with a past. In the process, the boy learns to look and finds that, for him, the camera is a means of finding things his naked eye has missed--things like inevitability of his mother's departure and the love that still binds his family.
Author Notes
Patricia MacLachlan was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on March 3, 1938. She received a B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1962 and taught English at a junior high school until 1979. She began writing picture books and novels at the age of thirty-five. Her works include The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, Skylark, Caleb's Story, Grandfather's Dance, Three Names, All the Places to Love, Before You Came, Cat Talk, and Snowflakes Fall. She won the Golden Kite Award for Arthur, for the Very First Time and the 1986 Newbery Medal for Sarah, Plain and Tall.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6Left with their loving but undemonstrative grandparents, Journey and his sister must face the fact that their free-spirited mother is gone forever. The old man's passionhis photographsand a stray cat provide the common bonds that bring the family together. A tightly focused, carefully composed masterpiece. (Sept. 1991) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Like Sarah, Plain and Tall , for which MacLachlan won the 1986 Newbery Award, this novel concerns a family trying to fill the gaping void left by the loss of a mother. And like that earlier masterpiece, this is a spellbinding tale, lean only in its length. The author's clipped dialogue and meticulously pared-down descriptions convey a deceptive simplicity--there are deep, intricate rumblings beneath the surface calm of MacLachlan's words. When his mother walks out on 11-year-old Journey and his older sister, Cat, the boy refuses to believe she will not return. He listens to the constant clicking of the shutter as his grandfather takes possession of Cat's cast-aside camera, asserting that ``sometimes pictures show us what is really there.'' Journey questions the value of this incessant picture-taking, yet pores through his grandmother's photo album, trying to patch together a fragmented past that is frustratingly out of focus. He hopes that the truth will be found in a box of family photos that his mother left in tiny scraps under her bed. Setting out to piece the pictures back together, Journey finally admits that this dream is as hopeless as his mother's return. It is his grandfather, on whom Journey has taken out much of his anger, who eventually answers the child's most troubling questions. The wise older man assures Journey that he is not to blame for his mama's departure, and shares a truth that is at the heart of the novel: although everything in life--from photographs to families--is not perfect, ``things can be good enough.'' Readers of all ages will find that MacLachlan's emotion-charged novel is far closer to being perfect than to being just ``good enough.'' One turns the last page convinced that Journey's is, indeed, a complete family, and that this is a full and refreshing work. Ages 8-14. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
In a compelling, compact novel, eleven-year-old Journey struggles to accept his mother's desertion. He is helped by his sister, grandmother, and, in particular, his grandfather, Marcus, who immerses himself in photography, taking pictures of the family to prove its existence to Journey. First-rate; reminiscent of the author's 'Arthur, for the Very First Time' (Harper). From HORN BOOK 1991, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Acting on the yearning expressed in the name she gave her son 11 years ago, Journey's mother has gone, leaving him with his grandparents and his older sister Cat. Mama sends money from time to time but no word or address. While Cat works out her distress by enlarging the farm garden, Journey struggles with his memories and tries to assign blame: Is it his fault that Mama left? Or is Grandfather, who's now preoccupied with snapping photos with the camera Mama also abandoned, an appropriate target for his anger? In supple, exquisitely economical style, MacLachlan (Sarah, Plain and Tall, Newbery Award, 1986) unfolds Journey's discoveries and insights along the way to his recognition that it's Grandfather--not the father who fled when he was a baby, not even Mama--who has always cared for him like a parent. In a symbolic act that Cat describes as ``murder,'' Mama ripped the family photos into tiny pieces that can never be rejoined; Grandfather is not only learning to take new photos but has found and is printing the old negatives. Meanwhile, a cat (``Bloom'') has insinuated herself into the family despite Grandma's aversion (she loves birds) and has given birth; and Journey has continued his friendship with Cooper, whose warm, happy family provides a healthy model: not perfect, but good enough--as Journey can finally describe their own family when Mama eventually telephones. Vintage MacLachlan: uniquely memorable people; a funny, pungent, compact, and wonderfully wise story. Illustrations not seen. (Fiction. 8+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-7. Using the imagery of the camera throughout, MacLachlan tells the story of a boy named Journey, abandoned by his mother and left to make a new life with his older sister, Cat, on his grandparents' farm. Although Journey's mother has told her son she will be back, his grandfather says she won't. That's when Journey hits him. Throughout the course of the story, Journey waits, though the only sign of his mother is the envelopes that come with two small packets of money, one for Journey, one for Cat. The boy thinks about his mother constantly but can only recall a fleeting image of his father--didn't he bounce his son on his knee? Journey also tries to puzzle out his relationship with his grandfather, who is always taking pictures, trying to hold moments in time. He tells the boy he does it to see what is there. Journey tries to take his own pictures, but he rails because they are not perfect. However, as Grandfather tells him, "A thing doesn't have to be perfect to be fine." And that goes for life, too. Things can be good enough. It takes the whole of this spare story for Journey to come to understand that fact, and though the photography metaphor is overworked and the bibliotherapy is not always properly shrouded, there is some wonderful emotion here to which children will instinctively respond. MacLachlan's writing, when it's at its best, vibrates to the heart. By the time his mother finally does call, Journey realizes that in a fundamental way, they do not focus on the world in the same way. The pictures he sees look different to her. The person who does have the same view is his grandfather. Grandfather is the one who will be his foundation now, and Journey finally remembers it was on Grandfather's knee that he sat as a young child. ~--Ilene Cooper
