Stay

Bobbie Pyron's Stay is a moving story for 11 year olds about a girl whose family ends up in a shelter, and a little dog who lives on the streets with a woman called Jewel.

What happens

Piper is almost twelve. Her parents have lost their jobs and their house, and for four months the family has been drifting from place to place. Now an overnight bus drops them in a cold city under huge mountains. The address Daddy's been given turns out to be an emergency shelter. Worse, men have to sleep in a different building, so the family can't even stay together.

The chapters swap between Piper and Baby, a small brown dog with a white patch on his head shaped like a snowflake. Baby's chapters are told in short lines, like a poem. Everything is a smell. Squirrels! Cheese! Jewel's sadness. He doesn't understand why people shout at her from cars, only that she's his whole world.

Piper keeps her Firefly Girls sash rolled up at the bottom of her backpack. She misses school so much she still practises her vocabulary words in her head. She plays I spy to keep her little brother Dylan going (he wears a red blanket as a superhero cape). And she notices everything, like the woman in the dinner queue with a dog tucked inside her coat.

Jewel gets turned away from the soup kitchen because of Baby. She won't go to a shelter either, because she'd have to give him up. Then one freezing night she falls very ill, and as she's carried away she tells Baby to stay. And he does.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is honest about being poor. Queues for everything, a form they can't fill in without birth certificates, strangers yelling "Get a job!", Jewel getting confused and very sick, a man kicking Baby. A reader whose own family has had a hard time might find it close to home, and a sensitive one might need a hug at the ambulance scene.

But it's full of kindness too. The bus driver who wishes them luck. The girl with the long black hair who wants to be friends. The strangers who bring blankets to the park. Piper and Mama laughing until they cry on the bus about how wet snow is.

What to read next

If your reader loved Piper noticing the people everyone else walks past, try Mr Stink. It's a lot sillier, but twelve-year-old Chloe is the only one in town who stops to talk to the man on the bench and his little dog.