DiCamillo, Kate.
LOUISIANA'S WAY HOME
Somerville MA : Candlewick Press, 2018
IL 3-6
ISBN 9780763694630

(2 booktalks)

Booktalk #1

Louisiana Elephante has decided she’s going to write everything down that has happened to her in case anyone ever wonders about her. First of all, she’s the daughter of the famous flying Elephante’s (legendary trapeze artists) who are dead, due to the dreaded family curse. Granny has been taking care of Louisiana for as long as she can remember and has been running away from the fate the curse has in store. When Granny wakes Louisiana in the middle of the night to escape across state lines, Louisiana vows to take matters into her own hands and return home with or without Granny. As Louisiana’s creating a plan, her situation takes an unexpected turn and she finds herself singing at a funeral and befriending a boy and his crow. Will she make it home or make a new home for herself right where she is? (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award 2019-2020)

Booktalk #2

Louisiana Elephante’s world gets turned upside down the night her Granny announces that the day of reckoning has arrived and they must leave their home immediately. For Louisiana that means leaving behind her best friends Raymie and Beverly as well as her beloved cat, Archie. As fate would have it, Granny’s mouth full of bad teeth land them in Richford, Georgia, a place that Louisiana at first desperately wants to leave. As Louisiana begins to settle into the rhythm of the town and learns more about her past, she begins asking herself what is the true meaning of home?   (Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award 2019 - 2020)