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Overview
This heartrending graphic memoir by Alyssa Bermudez (Big Apple Diaries) is a moving and unforgettable story about inner strength, healing, and finding hope.
It's 2002, and 14-year-old Alyssa is a freshman at a new high school where she knows NO ONE and the uniforms are hideous! What a disaster... Even worse? Her parents are forcing her to join the cross-country team. No one needs to run, or sweat, this much! Over time though, Alyssa actually starts to like running. She's getting better with practice, and some of the girls on the team are really nice. Alyssa begins to find a steady rhythm with high school, cross country, and her new stepfamily. But Alyssa's dad is sick, and she doesn't know what to do. When the worst thing imaginable happens, Alyssa will need to count on her friends, family, and herself to keep running forward.Customers Also Bought
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781250774309
- ISBN-10: 1250774306
- Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
- Publish Date: January 2026
- Dimensions: 8.09 x 5.92 x 1.09 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.46 pounds
- Page Count: 304
- Reading Level: Ages 10-14
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For Alyssa, starting ninth grade comes with a few uncertainties, especially around switching to an all-girls school and preparing for her father's upcoming remarriage. But overall, her mood is optimistic. She's coming off of an amazing summer at sleepaway camp, including her first serious crush on a boy. Freshman year starts off strong despite some early nerves: Alyssa makes friends easily, and she even grudgingly enjoys being part of the track team, which she joins after her athletic father insists she participate in high school sports.However, her father is no longer quite so sporty since developing a liver disease, and the growing seriousness of his condition forms a worrisome backdrop to Alyssa's freshman year. When the unthinkable happens, Alyssa must figure out how to navigate her way through her sorrow, drawing on her own strength, the support of her friends and lessons learned from her father. Alyssa Bermudez's second graphic memoir is a follow-up to Big Apple Diaries, which focused on her memories of 9/11. Run Home fully stands on its own, however, as an affecting memoir in its own right. Bermudez, who's kept a diary since an early age, structures her memoir as a series of "Dear Diary" entries, illustrated with humorous and heartfelt artwork in rich sherbet-hued shades. Readers will be interested to see the photos with which Bermudez fills the final pages, which offer a vivid reminder that this is the author's real-life story. Throughout, Bermudez incorporates snippets of poetry as well as lists and diagrams, all of which enrich the narrative. Some of the poems are a little clunky (perhaps making them all the more convincing as teenage writing) but their emotional rawness resonates, as do Alyssa's anxieties about losing friendships in the tumult of mourning and about finding her new place in her blended family, now transformed by loss. Young Alyssa's longing "for June once more” and her carefree summer camp self before the tragedy is a plaintive distillation of innocence lost. Run Home is a frank and emotionally resonant chronicle of forging a path through loss by putting one foot in front of the other.
For Alyssa, starting ninth grade comes with a few uncertainties, especially around switching to an all-girls school and preparing for her father's upcoming remarriage. But overall, her mood is optimistic. She's coming off of an amazing summer at sleepaway camp, including her first serious crush on a boy. Freshman year starts off strong despite some early nerves: Alyssa makes friends easily, and she even grudgingly enjoys being part of the track team, which she joins after her athletic father insists she participate in high school sports.However, her father is no longer quite so sporty since developing a liver disease, and the growing seriousness of his condition forms a worrisome backdrop to Alyssa's freshman year. When the unthinkable happens, Alyssa must figure out how to navigate her way through her sorrow, drawing on her own strength, the support of her friends and lessons learned from her father. Alyssa Bermudez's second graphic memoir is a follow-up to Big Apple Diaries, which focused on her memories of 9/11. Run Home fully stands on its own, however, as an affecting memoir in its own right. Bermudez, who's kept a diary since an early age, structures her memoir as a series of "Dear Diary" entries, illustrated with humorous and heartfelt artwork in rich sherbet-hued shades. Readers will be interested to see the photos with which Bermudez fills the final pages, which offer a vivid reminder that this is the author's real-life story. Throughout, Bermudez incorporates snippets of poetry as well as lists and diagrams, all of which enrich the narrative. Some of the poems are a little clunky (perhaps making them all the more convincing as teenage writing) but their emotional rawness resonates, as do Alyssa's anxieties about losing friendships in the tumult of mourning and about finding her new place in her blended family, now transformed by loss. Young Alyssa's longing "for June once more” and her carefree summer camp self before the tragedy is a plaintive distillation of innocence lost. Run Home is a frank and emotionally resonant chronicle of forging a path through loss by putting one foot in front of the other.