Westaway Author:Charles Philbrick (illustrated by Serge Hollerbach) Gordon didn't christen the family skiff 'Westaway" until that summer before his eleventh birthday, when he felt it absolutely neccessary to run away from home. Yet even unnamed, the boat was important in his long summers on Cape Cod-from the time when, nearly nine, he helped his father sand and paint it until it was finally lost in a hurricane ... more »four years later. During those years Gordon's inner world expanded from the dreamy dependence of childhood,to the sturdy self-reliance of adolescence, when he could even contemplate talking to girls in his eighth-grade class-so long as they talked about something sensible.« less