A Million Ways Home

by Dianna Dorisi Winget

Overview

A moving middle-grade story about love, loss, and the unlikely places we find home.

Poppy's life has been turned upside down after her grandma (and guardian) had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. But Poppy is working on a plan to help Grandma Beth so their life together can go back to normal. But when she witnesses an armed robbery, "back to normal" slips even further out of her reach. To keep Poppy safe, the budget-strapped police devise an unusual "witness protection program," wherein Poppy will stay with Detective Brannigan's mother. Soon Poppy is feeling almost at home, even making sort-of friends with a girl named Lizzie and definitely befriending Gunner, a beautiful dog with an uncertain fate. But it's still not home. So while she and Lizzie navigate a rocky friendship and plot to save Gunner's life, Poppy also tries to figure out a new plan to save Grandma Beth and their home, all while avoiding a dangerous robber who might be searching for her. But what if Grandma Beth can never come home and the robber is put behind bars? What will happen to Poppy then?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545667081
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	03/29/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Dianna Dorisi Winget is the author of A Million Ways Home(Scholastic Press). Her first novel is A Smidgen of Sky. She lives mountains of north Idaho with her husband, their daughter, and two dogs. For more about her, visit www.diannawinget.com.

Editorial Reviews

06/02/2014
Twelve-year-old Poppy’s comfortable life has taken a bad turn at the start of Winget’s absorbing novel: her beloved Grandma Beth, who has raised her from babyhood (her parents having been killed in an overseas bombing), has had a stroke that landed her in the hospital, and Poppy in a children’s center. When an unexpected confrontation with a killer puts Poppy in grave danger, she is temporarily taken in by a warmhearted detective and his compassionate mother—which complicates her plans to sneak Grandma Beth back to their own apartment. As her grandmother grows progressively worse, dog-lover Poppy finds solace at an animal shelter where she befriends and succeeds in training an aggressive German shepherd. Readers may be as frustrated as the sympathetic adults in Poppy’s life by the decisions her impulsiveness leads her to make, but will sympathize with her feelings of uprootedness, abandonment, and grief. While most will probably predict the story’s resolution early on, Winget (A Smidgen of Sky) weaves in enough suspense, emotion, and subplots to keep interest high. Ages 8–12. Agent: Lara Perkins, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Million Ways Home:

"While most will probably predict the story's resolution early on, Winget (A Smidgen of Sky) weaves in enough suspense, emotion, and subplots to keep interest high." — Publishers Weekly

"All the pieces come together for an emotionally satisfying read." — Kirkus

From the Publisher

2014-06-10
After the grandmother she has always lived with has a stroke, 12-year-old Poppy Parker faces tough tasks: She is asked to identify a murderer, and a dog she’s fallen in love with will be put down if she can’t prove its worth.Poppy has never forgiven her parents for taking a job in Botswana and getting killed there. Her now-hospitalized grandmother is really the only parent she’s ever known. Through a series of bad decisions, the distraught girl becomes a vital witness in a murder case and is endangered because she told the armed robber her name. Detective Trey Brannigan removes her from the children’s shelter where she’s spent a week and a half and sends her to stay with his mother, Marti. Through her, she meets Carol, who runs the Spokane Animal Shelter, her wayward daughter, Lizzie, and Gunner, a German shepherd who bit a small boy. Angry Lizzie becomes a friend, and training Gunner gives Poppy something to do with her days while she waits, worrying about her Grandma Beth and whether she will be returned to the shelter if she helps the police capture the killer. There are harsh and scary moments and hard truths to be sad about in this modern family tale, but appropriately for the audience, it ends positively, both for dog and child.All the pieces come together for an emotionally satisfying read. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews