The Homecoming: The Vandeerbeekers Lost and Found by Karina Yan Glaser

"WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?" LANEY ASKED.

ISA ROCKED HER BACK AND FORTH. "I DON'T KNOW. IT DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT, DOES IT?"

When big sister Isa discovers clothes neatly folded and hidden in the storage building in the community garden, she realizes someone has been sleeping in the chilly shed, and she names him the P.M., for "Person of Mystery." Isa secretly begins to leave food there every night, but when six-year-old Laney discovers a secret, everyone in their multi-racial, multi-pet family is soon in on it. Then Isa's twin Jessie overhears a conversation between their elderly neighbor, Miss Josie and her great-nephew Orlando, Jessie's special friend. Orlando is explaining that he didn't call Miss Jessie back because his phone suddenly stopped working. Orlando's mother has disappeared again, and Miss Josie tells Orlando his mother wants him to go back Georgia until she returns, unless...

"UNLESS WHAT...?" ORLANDO ASKS.

"UNLESS YOU WANT TO STAY HERE. WITH US. PERMANENTLY."

Now Jessie guesses who the P.M. is, and of course, the Vanderbeeker kids get involved, as they always do. Their parents find out that Orlando's mother stopped paying rent before she left, and Orlando was evicted. Telling no one, he's kept going to school and sleeping in the garden shed. For one thing, Orlando feels responsible to their formerly reclusive upstairs neighbor, Mr. Beiderman, who is training with him to run in the New York Marathon, and to his friends on the cross-country running team, and he really doesn't want to go back to Georgia to live with another great aunt. But when Miss Josie's elderly husband, Mr. Jeet, takes a turn for the worst and dies, things become even more complicated. Miss Josie learns that she cannot be Orlando's guardian because she has only one bedroom in her apartment, and of course the Vanderbeeker's apartment is full, with ten-year-old Oliver sleeping in what is really a large closet as it is.

It all comes to a climax when, on the day of the Marathon, Jessie finds a note from Orlando, saying he's fulfilled his promise to Mr. Beiderman and doesn't want to burden everyone else and has taken the early bus to Georgia. In a flurry of Vanderbeeker activity, word is passed through the runners in the race to Mr. Beiderman, who makes an on-the-spot decision and then a phone call.

"THAT'S MY TRAVEL AGENT! SHE'S GOING TO GET US ON A FLIGHT THAT LEAVES AT THREE THIRTY. OKAY WITH YOU?" HE ASKS JESSIE.

THE VANDERBEEKERS WERE STUNNED. THEIR NEIGHBOR, WHO ONLY A FEW YEARS BEFORE REFUSED TO LEAVE HIS APARTMENT, HAS A TRAVEL AGENT?

Mr. Beiderman and Jessie make their plane to Atlanta just as the cabin doors are about to be closed, and all's well that ends well for Mr. Beiderman, who does have a second bedroom and decides to become Orlando's guardian, and for Miss Josie, and the Vanderbeekers, who welcome their young friend home at last, in Karina Yan Glaser's fourth book in series, The Vanderbeekers Lost and Found (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).

And that's just ONE of the plotlines is this latest novel for middle readers from the popular Vanderbeeker series. With a lively family of kids originally ranging in age from five to thirteen, loving parents, and a lively, close-knit urban setting, there's something for a wide range of readers in these upbeat stories of modern family life. (See all reviews here.)

A child once wrote to the beloved children's author Beverly Cleary, sayiing she liked the way her books were "happy-sad," and Karina Yan Glaser's Vanderbeeker stories have that quality, too. And for fans of the Vanderbeeker family, I recommend another series of the adventures of a large family, beginning with The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy.