Clean Getaway

Clean Getaway
Nic Stone
Crown, 2020 240 pages
Grades 3-6
Realistic Fiction

Eleven-year-old Scoob is experiencing the worst spring break ever. Grounded for getting into trouble at school, single parent Dad cancelled their planned trip and he is stuck at home. G'ma to the rescue! When Scoob's grandmother shows up in a new-to-her RV, he leaves his phone at home, so Dad can't trace him, and hops aboard. What follows is a crazy road trip across the American south. G'ma, a white woman, made this same trip in the 1960's with her black husband and is recreating the trip in order to get to the destination to which the travelers never originally arrived. Along the way Scoob learns what it was like during the segregated south of the past and the discrimination and animosity experienced by his grandparents because of their inter-racial relationship. As the trip wears on, Scoob realizes that something is not quite right about G'ma. She won't let him call home, keeps mixing up his name, and seems increasingly confused and reckless. He begins to learn secrets from his beloved grandmother's past as she reveals her biggest mistakes and unloads the guilt that she has carried for much of her life. Being G'ma's wingman is not as much fun as it seemed at the beginning. What can Scoob do to get out of this uncomfortable and less-than-safe situation?

Nic Stone, critically acclaimed teen author, makes her debut middle grade novel with Clean Getaway. What starts out as a potentially zany multi-generational road trip becomes a lesson in Civil Rights, and ends on a serious and dangerous note. Kids will not only see first-hand what life was like in the segregated south of the past, but pick up fun facts about these states along the way. G'ma is clearly hiding some secrets and as the novel progresses they are revealed. She is not the perfect grandmother Scoob has always placed on a pedestal, but a real person who has made mistakes in life and is still making them now. Scoob's own nuclear family is complicated and now that he has learned that the world is not only black and white he can, maybe, learn to forgive the mother who has abandoned him. He finds healing through this experience in the relationship with his father and has gained maturity and some understanding behind Dad’s seemingly harsh and unfair ways. A novel of redemption, forgiveness, trust and doing the right thing, all with a history and civics lesson and a dash of humor. Scoob and G'ma may not completely achieve their "Clean Getaway", but the target task is mission accomplished.