LEAVING HOME

A bus trip or first day of school, a new crop to pick or a war to fight—all require a separation from family, a leaving— the thematic heart of this emotional, eclectic anthology of short stories, poems, and excerpts. Runaways, strays, castoffs, and foster kids inhabit these previously published pieces about initiation into adulthood—each an unglamorous, everyday hero's journey of sorts. A bus ride offers solace from a stranger in ``Dawn,'' by Tim Wynne-Jones, and provides an invitation of self-discovery in Annette Sanford's ``Trip in a Summer Dress.'' A five-year-old, ``full up with anger and scaredness,'' learns a life-giving dance in Vickie Sears's ``Dancer.'' Whatever the circumstance, each work involves a severing of the umbilical cord of youth—a child or teenager thrown out of the safety of family, left to chance and fate. Excerpts from the adult works of Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, and Tim O'Brien add a cast of characters whose sophisticated insights stretch beyond the typical scope of stories for YAs. But every piece stands alone as a sharp slice of character, setting, and feeling. Rochman and McCampbell (Bearing Witness, 1995, etc.) have created not a standard first-kiss, coming-of-age road map, but a mosaic of uniquely shaped, cross- cultural perspectives written with grit and grace, leaving readers with the satisfying sense that something shattered has been pieced back together. (Anthology. 12+)