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The Ride Home

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Mark is a city kid who has come to a small town to live with his grandmother after his mom goes into rehab.

Mark has to take a school bus home for the first time. The long, noisy ride home is nothing like riding city transit. There's some kind of secret code of knowing where you're allowed to sit, the kids scream nonstop and someone even tries to set Mark's seat on fire. He quickly decides that all these kids are too strange and does his best to avoid them. But when tragedy strikes, Mark learns that he has more in common with these country kids than he had ever imagined.

This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don't like to read! The epub edition of this title is fully accessible. Available in French as L'autobus infernal.

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  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2019
      A move lands Mark on a rowdy school bus fraught with both social and meteorological peril. Canadian middle schooler Mark can no longer ride public transit since he's left the big city. Instead, after changing schools in mid-November, he's forced to take the hourslong school bus route. His grandmother encourages him to make friends, but Mark sees little in these small-town folk who, frankly, act like wild animals. He faces an irate driver, gross public displays of affection, pyromaniacs, and snack-food projectiles. Plus, there are all these unspoken rules foreign to him. Mark just wants to survive the ride. However, harsh weather conditions make the roads snowy and icy, which lands the bus stuck on some train tracks due to an accident. This title offers a low decoding level of mastery, so it's accessible to a wide range of readers. Yet the simplicity does not compromise the storytelling or the realistic depth of the characters. In fact, Mark comes to realize that the other passengers are more than they appear. Even he is eventually forced to admit the reason for his move--a bipolar single mother who recently attempted suicide. Bullying and complicated family lives make for empathetic plot beats for this evidently all-white cast of characters. This is an accessible narrative with a layered reading experience. (Fiction. 10-13)

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • ATOS Level:3.5
  • Lexile® Measure:510
  • Interest Level:4-8(MG)
  • Text Difficulty:0-2

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