by Linda Schlossberg. Adie is the smallest girl in her sixth-grade class, a fact that makes her something of an outsider. But what really brands her as different is her single-parent mother, who is obsessed with California's drug culture of the 1980s, the milieu in which the story is set. The obsession grows into full-blown paranoia when mom starts to believe she is being stalked by drug dealers and, pulling Adie out of school, takes to the road. The two nomads begin living in motels where, Adie thinks, everything is scaled down, a smaller version of itself. Schlossberg's first novel is told from Adie's point of view and in her first person voice, which means that the girl, unlike the adults they encounter, fails to understand much of what is happening. Yet the mother's mental illness is so blatant that one wonders why no one intervenes and, the mother having quit her job, where the money comes from to support their flight. Despite these improbabilities, the book is inarguably well-written, and Adie becomes a fully realized character whose plight never fails to engage the reader. --Booklist
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