Clean Getaway

Nic Stone's Clean Getaway is a road trip story for 9 year olds about a boy, his grandmother and a guidebook from 1963.

What happens

Scoob is grounded. The holiday his dad promised is cancelled, the suitcase has been sitting packed in his wardrobe for a month, and there's a to-do list on the kitchen whiteboard every single day.

Then G'ma turns up out of nowhere and asks if he fancies an adventure. She's four foot eleven and drives propped on a gingham cushion so she can see over the wheel.

Scoob leaves a note, leaves his phone behind on purpose, and gets in.

It takes him a while to notice he's not in her Mini. He's in a brand new motorhome, because G'ma has sold her house. The tyre swing, the attic window seat, the bath where he used to drop the fizzy bath balls and pretend he was soaking in a galaxy. All gone, and she's so pleased with the motorhome that he can't say a word about it.

That gap between what Scoob feels and what he says is the whole book, really.

Then he finds her treasure box. Old maps, postcards, a photograph of the grandfather he's never seen a picture of, and a small green booklet called the Travelers' Green Book, from 1963.

His dad has always said G'pop was a jewel thief who died in prison. G'ma tells it very differently, crying at a sunset on top of a mountain they weren't allowed to park on in 1968.

Plenty to talk about here, and none of it is softened. G'pop was black and G'ma is white, and the Green Book existed because black travellers needed to know which towns had anywhere safe to stop. Scoob's dad gives him a version of the talk, holding up the back of Scoob's hand against his own palm, about what happens to boys like him when they hit boys like Bryce. It's a short scene and it's the one that will stay with you.

There's more. Scoob is grounded because he punched a boy who had spent weeks tormenting his best friend's little brother, who has epilepsy, including mimicking his seizures. The punching is on the page. Scoob's mum is gone and rang once.

But it's funny too, and often. G'ma eats oysters with her false teeth in her handbag, calls her Ensure a GPS, and is clearly up to something she hasn't mentioned.

What to read next

For another child piecing together a family they've only heard about, try Some Places More Than Others. Amara talks her way onto a trip to Harlem to meet her dad's people and finds out he doesn't speak to her grandpa.