Book Review: Clean Getaway by Nic Stone

Clean Getaway
by Nic Stone (j Stone)

Clean Getaway is Nic Stone’s first middle grade novel. I was excited to read this since I enjoyed some of her teen stuff, and can report that she absolutely nails the early middle grade tone.

 

Scoob’s white little old grandmother takes him on a road trip through the American south in her newly purchased Winnebago. She’s pretty cryptic about what their goal is, but she’s retracing a journey she took with Scoob’s grandfather a long time ago. Scoob is initially just happy to get out of the house since his dad grounded him for some in-school misbehavior. But as they go farther, stopping to visit sites of personal interest to grandma and historic sites related to Black civil rights, Scoob starts to worry more about his grandmother’s behavior. She may even be…breaking laws!

 

Chapters are short with a clear sense of progress since there’s an illustrated map of each state they enter. It has the standard “state facts” plus some hand drawings that Scoob is making along the way as a sort of visual journal. I liked flipping back to the previous state’s map to see how the events I just read about were represented. There are also illustrations every dozen pages or so, mostly of Scoob and his tiny grandma on their journey. Chapter numbers are in a “Route” sign and mid-chapter breaks are in the form of a road with dotted line.

 

In addition to all of these visual markers, there is a double line of suspense to hook and keep kids’ interest. First, what is Grandma’s goal in taking Scoob across state lines and why is she doing such suspicious things along the way like swapping license plates? Second, what’s the truth about Scoob’s grandfather that neither his dad nor grandma would talk about all these years? Both storytlines “hooks” are equally strong and come together by the end, as you might expect.

 

This is a great introduction to vital pieces of Jim Crow history that kids don’t tend to hear about in school, such as the Green Book, sundown towns, and miscegenation laws (though that big word isn’t used in the text). Nic Stone mixes the light humor of the road trip adventures with the mystery of family history and some important tough stuff of national history (and national present). It’s so touching that I cried through the last few chapters in a mix of sad and happy for the characters.

 

I’d put this at the lower end of the Grades 3-5 range overall. Not a lot of text on the page and lots of chapter breaks. There’s silly ‘cuss’ words that aren’t really cuss words, and a couple of “damns.” Scoob has recently started to look at his best friend in a new way, signaling a first crush and nothing more, which is appropriate for our age group, whether it’s same sex or different sex. There’s a reference to n-word, literally as “the n-word” which is again appropriate for all third graders to read about. As Blair Imani wrote, “If Black children are ‘old enough’ to experience racism then white children are ‘old enough’ to learn about it.” This book has both explicit and implicit anti-racist education for kids. An example of implicit would be grandma teaching Scoob about starting a fire in the woods, since Black people have been systematically excluded from activities like hiking and camping. G’ma herself is a complex character, trying to do right by Scoob while acknowledging that she has — and continues to do — some things that the book clearly portrays as not right.

 

The only complaint I have about the book is “fat” being used as an insult by Scoob [p. 13, p. 15, p. 52] with no pushback in the book for him doing this. Grandma describes someone as “the ugly woman with the hooked nose” which is harmful to kids who think of their nose as hooked [p. 58].

 

Overall, this is one of the best early middle grade books I’ve read in terms of suck-you-in-story *and* quality important content for all kids to know about. It’s a great story about doing what we can to right the past. Even if it’s just a little, that counts for a lot.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse, by Joseph Marshall, or The Parker Inheritance, by Varian Johnson]

[ publisher’s official Clean Getaway web page ] | [ official Nic Stone web site ]

 

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

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