Search - The Wanderer

Sharon Creech is always a good children's/YA read, and this one tells the story of Sophie's adventure sailing across the Atlantic from the US to Ireland on a 40-foot sailboat with her three uncles and two cousins. They must all learn to get along and deal with each other's quirks of personality, besides surviving the storms encountered during the crossing. It's a great coming of age story, nothing fancy or spectacular, just good solid writing.

The book is aimed at readers around 12, I'd say - but it's a really well-done, affecting story, about a young girl who insists on being included on a very DIY yacht trip involving extended family, and with the goal of visiting a grandfather who's moved to England. Strangely, however, although the girl is eager to meet this man, the other family members seem convinced that she's never met him before, as she's adopted - something which she seems to be reluctant to admit. No one is quite sure how to react to her enthusiasm for telling her grandfather's "stories" to pass the time on the boat, either. But through a trip filled with adventures and danger, the embers of this family all get to know each other better than they expected, and to face things about themselves. Every character in the book, child or adult, is psychologically realistic and extremely well-realized, and the narrative device of switching first-person journals, one by the girl and one by her boy cousin, is extremely effective as well.

this is a must read book