If either the superintendent or the schoolmaster discover his secret, the result will be the end of his beloved Kingdom. As Alan sees the world, motives don't matter. Alan can evade the nasty building superintendent more readily than the concerned schoolmaster who pries into his affairs. The most well-intentioned adults become the most threatening.

Therefore his primary problem is to keep his solo status a secret. Alan knows, too, that the system does not allow boys of 12 to live alone. He is not bitter, but he knows how the system works - if you are a kid and have no rights - and his sole desire is to stay out of the system's clutches. At her death he resolves that they will not share the fate of their predecessors.Īlan is a realist. With Aunt Jessie, Alan rebuilt his Animal Kingdom with new pets. Kind adults found Alan a new home, but his animals - the ones he loved then - were carted off to the Animal Shelter and gassed. It has happened before when foster homes collapsed. What does dismay him is the certain and terrible knowledge that if adults - any adults - take over his life they will destroy his animals. Suddenly, and painlessly for them both, Aunt Jessie dies.Īlan faces the world alone. Her greatest virtue is that she tolerates his animals. He is living in a city with an aged aunt, one of a series of relatives who have temporarily housed him.

They want to try their wings - in imagination - and find out how it feels to fly, unaided, in the adult world.Īlan, the hero of Isabelle Holland's novel, has been orphaned so many times he has nearly lost count and, as the book opens, his only emotional ties are to his animals: his dog, his cat, his gerbils, white rat and hamster. Not that children want to kill off their parents. I can think of a few satisfactory adventures that include Parental Guidance. There was no room on his raft for a loving mother and father. On a more realistic level there is Huck Finn.

Stuart Little is, of course, the quintessence of the theme - a very small person surviving on his own in a very large world. Unencumbered, Dorothy relied on her own wits, ingenuity and calm courage to solve each crisis as it arose. Dorothy in Oz thought lovingly of Aunt Min and Uncle Bill back in Kansas, but luckily for her and her readers they stayed there. Alice could hardly have journeyed through Wonderland dragging her parents behind. ORPHANS MAKE splendid heroes and heroines of stories for the young.

The Journey Home by Isabelle Holland