The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Coyote Sunrise #1

by Dan Gemeinhart

Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, crisscrossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash.

Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished - the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box - she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it.

Along the way, they'll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there's Gladys....

Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all...but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after”.

Genres: Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Young Adult, Audiobook, Family, Adventure

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2019

Reviews

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: $2.99 Kindle US today 6/15/20

This book was the peanut butter to my jelly!!!!







Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

[Virginie Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

''Your heart needs this joyful miracle of a book.''
- Katherine Applegate

And what I need is a movie based on this incredible, moving novel!🎬😍
I want to travel with Rodeo and Coyote across the american landscapes, meet the amazing characters boarding on their school bus along the way and cry another time at the beautiful ending of the story. And I hate crying... but this book was worth it.

''There is so much happiness in the world. There is so much sadness in the world. There is just so much in the world.'' Yeah, Coyote, you got it right.

4.5 (mainly because of the far-fetched last chapter.)

[Rachel L · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars!

What a beautiful and heartfelt story! I have to admit, I picked this book up because I had some serious cover love happening. Well, the attractive cover caught my attention and I ended up loving this story.

Five years ago, Coyote's sisters and mother died in an accident. Since then, she and her dad Rodeo have never been back to their hometown, driving a bus continuously across the country. When Coyote gets word that something she, her mother and her sisters had buried was about to be destroyed, she concocts a plan to trick her father back to their hometown.

Filled with amazing characters, this is an unforgettable story. I will be recommending it to children and adults, I think it's a book many people will love and enjoy. I got Captain Fantastic vibes from this (only in a more appropriate middle grade format). I highly recommend this book to all, I had tears in my eyes at the end.


Follow me on ♥ Facebook ♥ Blog ♥ Instagram ♥ Twitter ♥

[Claude's Bookzone · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up to 5

Well yet again I have made a spectacle of myself in public by walking around the supermarket listening to an audiobook and shopping through tear filled eyes. Moreover, I forgot the main item I was meant to get. No bread in our house tonight!

Simply put, I loved it! The writing was fabulous and the characters were real and endearing and just wonderful. It's a really emotional story about Coyote and Rodeo dealing with their grief after losing the rest of their family in a car accident. They stay on the move in their house bus trying to out run the tragedy that stole their loved ones from them. I ugly snot cried a few times (thankfully not in the supermarket). I thought the people they collected along the way contributed to the story wonderfully by adding heart and compassion. It is classified as middle school, but I would be careful about giving it to younger middle schoolers as it is so very sad in parts. I would also recommend this for NZ Y9 students too. Love love loved it!

[Amber Kuehler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan Gemeinhart does it again!

This book should really come with tissues because it ripped my heart out and made me cry happy and sad tears throughout the entire book.

Rodeo and Coyote are a father/daughter duo that live on the road in an old school bus called Yager. They have been roaming the US for five years - ever since a tragic accident that left them both devastated.

They have not been home in five years and Rodeo refuses to go back to their home in Washington State but Coyote learns that she MUST go back when a beloved park is about to be torn down. In this park is a memory box that Coyote buried with her mom and sisters. Will she make it back? Will Rodeo and Coyote continuing grieving while criss crossing the United States in a bus?

You will fall in love with Coyote and cry right along with her as you imagine going through the unimaginable like she is.

Don’t forget my warning about the tissues. And you might want to read it alone.

[Shari (Shira) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not a Dan Gemeinhart fan. His books are too "Perils of Pauline" for me. You know, one cliffhanging event after another. However, my Mock Newbery group nominated this book as a possible contender for 2020, to be read in March. So I read it. Gemeinhart stayed true to his style. Coyote and her father faced one obstacle after another. It is hard to believe that someone can get into so much trouble, yet always come out smelling like a rose. Another problem is something that I am noticing in middle grade books lately, "Issue Overload." COYOTE SUNRISE was no exception. Issues addressed in this book included: death in the family, domestic violence, police abuse, coming of age, teen runaway, racial discrimination, and LGBT. Phew! I'd hope that the committee does not award the biggest prize in children's literature to this book, and I hope that my group picks a better book for May.

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved so many things about this road trip story. The cover and the title caught my attention immediately and I was thrilled to find an ARC on NetGalley. The story of Coyote and Rodeo unfolds for us as we travel with them cross country. There is a kitten early in the book and a goat later. Their old bus, Yager, has transported them away from their home and they continue to wander until Coyote is told of an event in their hometown that draws her back. She manages to get them driving in the right direction and they pick up a diverse group of travelers on their way. Will Coyote get to the finish line in time? You might need some tissues to finish this new book. Recommended for fifth grade and up.

Gemeinhart has a new title out now: The Midnight Children. Check it out!

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great book if you can ignore the very, very dark place that this storyline comes from. Usually a man who has a mental break, changes his daughter’s name, refuses to let her be more than an arms distance from him and isolates her from everyone else except a phone call a week to her grandmother for over 5 years would be called abusive. In this book he’s called Rodeo.

[Katy O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️😭📚🎧

They all TOLD me to read this one, and they were RIGHT! I dug in yesterday afternoon and this morning when it was time for my walk I just couldn’t stop, so I switched to the audio version on Scribd and only took a quick break for my shower. I listened while I got ready for work, while I drove to work, and while I collected books for check in at work. I SOBBED in the car and my kids were like, “MOM, remember it’s FICTION!”.

Oh, this is such a heart print book for me. It’s about family and grief, and friends and adventure. It will mean one thing to kids but as a mom, it absolutely broke and warmed my heart. I won’t stop thinking about Coyote and her family and band of friends for a long long time.
.
Thanks a million to my #bookstagram friends @librarianmsg , @redcanoereader , @afomaumesi @whatkreads for inspiring me to pick this one up as soon as it was released and to Katherine Applegate for this amazing blurb on the back cover:
.
“Sometimes a story comes along that just plain makes you want to hug the world. Your heart needs this joyful miracle of a book.”
.
She was right. And Dan Gemeinhart thank you for this story. And for making me CRY. And feel all the feels. Thanks for Coyote.

[Tina Loves To Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a middle grade. This is about a little girl and her Dad finding their way back home, and they help people on the way. The characters are fun and so much fun to follow. I also think the school bus is a character also well, and that bus is so much more then just a home or a bug. This story is well-written and so much fun to read. I love reading this book. This is a fast pace book that as some fun adventures. I also have to say I love the cover of this book. I am very lucky to win a Soft Cover Copy of this book from a goodreads giveaway, and this review is 100% my own opinion about how I feel about the book.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knee-jerk reaction. Definition: A quick reaction that does not allow you time to consider something carefully. Alternate Definition: What happens to me, specifically, when more than three people tell me to read the same book. I wish I wasn’t such a little pouty child about this. I wish I could say that the more that people tell me to read a book, the more intrigued I become until I just can’t help but snatch it up for a perusal. But instead, if a bunch of people say they love a book and highly recommend it to me, I get all kinds of contrary. I’ve been trying to pick apart why exactly I have this reaction and insofar as I can tell it’s some perverse combination of being sad that I didn’t read the book first and a weird kind of twisted jealousy. Not jealousy of the person, but of the book itself. Everyone thinks you’re so great, huh? Well let’s see how great you are when I refuse to read you. Ha ha! Not so clever now, are ya? Yeah. I got issues. Fortunately, I also have a kernel of good sense that, given enough time, will make itself known and pique my curiosity when the time is right. By now I’m sure you have heard about The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise from someone. Could have been a kid reader who loved it. Could have been a gatekeepe (a librarian or bookseller or teacher) who couldn’t stop talking about its bold choices. Could have been online, on best of the year lists, or just generally on the lips of the general populace. Wherever you heard about it, you may too have experienced that old “knee jerk reaction”. So here’s a little tip. You know why they really call it that? Because you would be a “jerk” to reject something quite this good without at least giving it a try. Hey, whaddaya gotta lose?

“I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing.” The name’s Coyote Sunrise. She’s a kid who’s been traveling with her dad in a refurbished school bus on the perpetual move these last five years. Five years ago her mom and sisters were killed in an accident, and ever since then it’s just been her and Rodeo going from town to town. They never stop for long. They never settle. And frankly, Coyote’s had enough. Something’s gotta change and after a phone call with her grandmother Coyote knows what that something is. She needs to go back to her original home, the one they’ve been avoiding all these years, to find something she buried long long ago. She knows Rodeo won’t go for it though, so that means crafty planning. It means picking up new friends along the way that can help. And it means Coyote’s going to do the one thing Rodeo has always forbidden. She’s going to remember the past.

From the first chapter onward, Gemeinhart sets up the parameters of this world. And to do this he established Coyote as a very specific kind of child protagonist: the kind that is street smart to her own universe. I think I’m mixing my metaphors here, but I’m having difficulty finding a better way to say this. She’s savvy, Coyote is. Knows the lay of the land, the weaknesses of the adults in her periphery, but also has enough honest-to-goodness childlike qualities to keep from sounding like a small, shrunken version of a 45-year-old woman. You’ll find this particularly kind of child hero present in such luminaries as Gilly Hopkins, the Artful Dodger, and Thelonius Mitchell in this year’s The Usual Suspects by Maurice Broaddus. It’s a hard character not to like. They fulfill a distinct kind of fantasy that kids have about having the presence of mind to see through the half-lies and all bald-faced fibs adults try to sell them. Of course, usually these characters can see through any number of adults. Coyote’s a little different. She excels at seeing through one person in particular. The one, you might argue, that got her into this mess in the first place: her dad.

In terms of creating memorable characters, Rodeo’s a doozy. And Gemeinhart sets himself up with an incredibly difficult task. There’s a lotta layers on this hippy dippy fella. He’s been completely undone by grief. So much so that he cannot even allow his daughter to call him “daddy” because of the memories it might stir. So basically, the author of this book has to constantly keep you from thinking of Rodeo as a psychotic (if grief-wracked) jerk. And he does make bad bad choices. Yet somehow, and it’s not just the fact that Coyote is telling you this, you understand that the guy is decent. Now it is one thing for a fellow adult to understand a flawed parental character in a book. It is another for a child reader, who naturally is going to side with the child protagonist time and again, to sympathize as well. And yet, I think Gemeinhart manages it. Just barely (Rodeo makes some breathtakingly awful moves in the course of this story) but by the end you understand why his daughter loves him. The other characters are, by necessity, less fleshed out than these two, but none of them felt flat or two-dimensional. Gemeinhart has a gift for drilling a succinct description of a human soul right into the crevices of your heart.

He also earns his big emotional moments. I’ll level with you when I say that I have no idea how an author does that. But if you’re going to try to pull off these big, powerful points in a story, you have to have come by them honestly. Do it poorly and you’ll lose the child reader immediately. You think a kid can’t tell when they’re being played? Sometimes I’ll read a middle grade novel and the emotional scenes will fall completely flat. Like the author is ramping up the background music, but should have spent more time on the plot. In this book, the author builds trust between the reader and the author. So much so that you can have a scene where two characters scream their secrets into the wind on the top of a moving school bus and it’ll feel real and earned rather than a sneaky plot device meant to further the characters’ emotional growth in the eyes of the reader.

To be truthful with you, a book of this sort will win extra points with me, every single time, if it’s funny to boot. I keep track of when the funny in a book rears its head. For me, the first moment that I sincerely felt I was in good hands was when Coyote had snuck her cat onto the bus and found it later, snuggled into the neck of Rodeo. It reads, “I was standing over him, my hands reached out toward his neck . . . He blinked a few times and looked me up and down, still looming like a strangler over him.” In point of fact, let’s look at a couple other lines Gemeinhart throws at the reader. Even out of context, they’re mighty fine:

- About her cat: “Ivan, guiltless and unapologetic as a cash-flush con man, closed his eyes and leaned into my fingers.”
- “You could say that learning to play Rodeo was like learning to play a guitar, if the guitar had thirteen strings instead of six and three of them were out of tune and two of them were yarn and one of them was wired to an electric fence. He’s a handful, is what I’m saying.”
- “I stood there for a beat or two. The fake smile I’d plastered on my face went stale and rotted away.”
- “There were tears in his eyes. But that could’ve just been the wind. I had tears in my eyes too. But that could’ve just been the wind, too.”
- “…my voice didn’t have an ounce of give in it. It wasn’t mean, but it wasn’t holding hands and blowing kisses either.”

Hm. Seem to have gotten to the end of the review here. Probably should mention something that I didn’t like about the book. You know, to even the rest of this out. And there was, interestingly enough, one element that really bugged me as I read. At no point in the narrative does Gemeinhart ever explain what Coyote does in terms of schooling. Rodeo doesn’t seem to be the homeschooling type, nor is any mention made of that. The closest thing we get is Coyote mentioning that she has to read the newspaper for him, and newspaper reading does not a five-year education make. I found it a bit difficult to believe that the events that happen in this book (in true Blues Brothers fashion at times) do not end with the state taking a close look at whether or not Coyote’s been playing hooky all these years. I can suspend disbelief pretty far, but the leniency of the authorities struck me as a bit on the unlikely side.

Otherwise, however, it’s a darn good book. Why didn’t anyone tell me? I kid. It’s kind of gratifying to know that the story has been finding its audience. And what child wouldn’t find the notion of living on a school bus, tricked out like a long, yellow mobile home, enticing? It’s not trying to be wholly realistic, but it gets there. It’s not trying to be some kind of serious novel that it’s not, because these jokes land. The voice works. The characters are believable. It sometimes dips and loses you (homeschool, Coyote’s ability to serve as a break-up intermediary on the phone, etc.) but for the most part it pulls itself together and serves as a strong reminder that at the end of the day, we all just want a good story filled with good writing. This book delivers.

So, Dan Gemeinhart . . . what else you got?

For ages 9-12.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Middle Grade March! I thought this book was so sweet, yet so very emotional. Plus I absolutely love the cover! A 13 year old girl named Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, live in an old school bus and drive around aimlessly wherever the wind carries them. This premise had me so intrigued from the first time I read the synopsis.

Coyote has lost her mom and two sisters at the same time. All she has left is her Dad. She learns from her Grandmother that an old park is being torn down in her home town, and she is desperate to go back home to retrieve a memory box buried there. However, her dad refuses to go back so she has to devise a plan to do it without him knowing. The journey home is full of adventure and they pick up a cast of characters along the way. Great story!

[☾❀Miriam✩ ⋆｡˚ · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It's funny how sometimes when a face goes gentle, it ends up looking stronger somehow.”



Okay, so. This book was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Honestly, I don't remember the last time I read a book so deep, exciting, interesting, perfectly balanced, emotional, happy, sad, enticing, un-put-downable, colorful, perfectly paced and beautiful. I kinda suspected I was into road-trip books, but now I know for sure. This book just has that perfect balance between nostalgic and melancholic, that bittersweet taste of a memory of when you were a child and your mom and dad were young and you were all together, before everybody went their own way and now you only call each other once a month.



Each and every character of this book has his/her own personality, dreams and reasons for being on the road. And they all make sense on a deep level. Each and every character has their own path of growth throughout the novel, and we see them laugh, cry, evolve and remember in a beautiful roller-coaster of emotions. This book makes you smile, laugh, ugly cry, go awwww, it makes you feel for the characters, identify with them even though you have nothing in common, and the locations! The descriptions! The action! And that lovely kitten 🤩



I listened to it as an audiobook, but now I definitely want to buy a physical copy of this book because I want everybody I know to read it. I had to force myself to stop listening sometimes because I didn't want this story to finish too soon. This is definitely one of the most beautiful middle grade books I ever read... Well actually one of the best books I ever read in general. I LOVE IT!!!!!

[Rana Heshmati · Rating 4 out of 5]

الان که در تب و تابش هستم شاید خیلی موقعیت خوبی نباشه که ریویو بنویسم واسش، ولی خب. :))
خیلی دوستش داشتم. واقعا زیاد. اما، ترجمه واقعا خوب نبود. بد بود حتی. ناراحت کننده.
و یه طوری بود، انگار که فیلمنامه‌ست. یه جوری جزئیات اضافه کرده بود و هی ماجراجویی می‌نداخت وسط و همممممه چیز رو توضیح می‌داد، که من همه‌ش تو ذهنم فیلمش رو تصور می‌کردم و راحت کتاب نمی‌خوندم :)) یه حالت تازه و عجیبی داشت. انگار دیالوگ فیلم بود. نه جمله‌های کتاب. انگار توصیفات صحنه بود، نه توصیف‌های کتاب. و دقیقا نمی‌دونم فرقشون چیه و چطور. صرفاً حس.


کایوت و باباش، با اتوبوس مدرسه زردشون توی جاده‌ها سفر می‌کنن و در این بین آدم‌هایی رو ملاقات می‌کنن و خبری رو می‌شنون که زندگی‌شون به سمت و سوی جدیدی می‌ره و مجبور می‌شن به چیزی که ازش فرار می‌کردن برگردن. بپذیرنش.
و واقعا این روند، خیلی خیلی خوب به تصویر کشیده شده بود. خیلی درک می‌کردمشون. خیلی واقعی بود. خیلی آشنا بود برام. و هی فکر می‌کردم، گرچه چیزهایی که من باهاشون دست و پنجه نرم می‌کنم به سختی چیزی که کایوت و رودئو باهاش روبه‌روئن نیست؛ اما چقدر شبیه...

دوستش داشتم. و در روند جذابی کتاب به دستم رسید، که بیش از پیش برام عزیزش کرد. ❤️

[Afoma (Reading Middle Grade) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to gather my thoughts, but EVERYONE needs to read this book. I promise, it's THAT good.

[Sarah Swann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS!!! The characters were so fantastic. I wasn’t expecting it to get so intense, but it was a wonderful surprise. I definitely found myself not wanting to put it down. The theme of grief was felt throughout the book and broke my heart. I just loved it!

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 glowing stars. This book will stick with me for a while.

[Holli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I had some problems with this book. At the beginning I absolutely adored it. Road trip + cat? Sign me up. But then of course we have the AF (affirmative action = AF) characters. Black person? Check. Mexican (who are probably illegal but never specifies)? Check. Random gay person out of nowhere ? Check. Each time these characters appeared I was cast out of the story and thrown into reality. What could this story be (and every other story) if the writer isn't forced to write these into existence? AND the writer MUST express an opinion and that opinion MUST be the leftist view. Why are children being forced to read about homosexuality? Seems a grown-up topic and one many adults still grapple with. Are we telling children they have a right to their own mind? Or are we forcing them to believe this agenda and that they are racist\nazis if they don't agree? Lord help us if (shock!) we are ever allowed an opposite viewpoint that creates a real discussion. Or if it is just handled realistically so that every character is allowed a chance to fully grow, allowed to be human, flawed, exasperating, messed up, or a gray character, a liar, etc. I am so sick of these cookie cutter characters. Also, I got tired of Coyote 's way of thinking. It was always over the top and sometimes one sentence was enough. Not paragraphs. I laughed and I cried. But I cannot recommend this book. It was a bit of a let down.

[Abbie Lewis · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been cute and enjoyable aside from the few other quibbles I could have had with a few characters, writing style, but THE one that sealed it half way through the book the introduction of gay girl was completely unnecessary. It for 10-12 year olds. Writers imaginations are dwindling down to only being able to write what the world is desperately trying to normalize and hiding it under a fun storyline.
Like I said it could have been fun but the undertone fo follow your heart is prevalent.

[Skip · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a shame that this wonderful story by Dan Gemeinhart did not win at least an Honor award in the 2019 Newbery voting. Coyote and her father, Rodeo, are driving all over the U.S. in an old converted school bus, trying to outrun their memories of the car crash that killed her mother and two sisters. Coyote finally realizes she is lonely, and adopts a kitten after rescuing a stranger. Following a call with her grandmother, who tells her that the local park is being redeveloped, Coyote decides she needs to go home to rescue a memory box buried there even though her father will never agree. As she hatches her plan, they begin to accumulate others will equally strong needs for help and friendship, creating the family that was lost five years ago: a musician trying to get to his girl in Idaho, a son and his mother fleeing an abusive father, a girl looking for adventure, and eventually a goat. Lots of fun and warmth for the soul. 4.5 stars. Recommended.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming story about a young girl, racketing around the country with her dad in an old school bus, and the journey they make back home for the first time in years, and the people they discover and help along the way. I loved Coyote, and their fellow travelers. I was more than a little pissed, however, at "Rodeo" (her father) who I think had done a very selfish thing in order to escape his own grief, without seeming to think for a second about what Coyote might need. I'm impressed that after five years, she wasn't a total basket case! Still, the ending is very satisfying, and the book is fun.

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't stomach this one. It was over-the-top with the quirkiness as they kept adding people to the bus and then even a goat. I rolled my eyes at the goat. I just wasn't into it.

I stand by my assessment that there were some real believability issues when it came to how Coyote as a 12-year-old girl was portrayed. There are some realistic puberty issues that would have come with riding on a bus with her dad all the time. Girls that age are doing things like showering regularly, shaving their legs (when she wore a bathing suit without any concern, that did not ring true to my experiences with and at that age), having a period. I wondered if Gemeinhart had considered that many/most girls have those concerns at 12. Because of that, I almost felt like it would have been better if Coyote was a boy so that those things could have been written away more easily.

The one thing I did like was the portrayal of how Coyote protected and worked around her dad's feelings. I think that in a more heartfelt and less quirky book, that would have been outstanding but in this book it couldn't overcome my broader frustrations. There is a very sweet and real story in here that was overshadowed by the emphasis on adding an ever-increasing band of characters. And a goat.

[madame Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

ce roman est incroyablement beau. je me demande encore pourquoi je n’avais pas pris le temps de le lire avant 🥺🤍 — c’est simple, j’ai ri, j’ai pleuré, j’ai souri et j’ai pleuré encore. c’est la famille, c’est la vie qui peut être si injuste, c’est un père et sa fille et leur relation si solide et ce sont tous ces non dits ... Coyote, on s’y attache dès le début et on adore tout autant Rodéo. puis, que dire de tous ces personnages qui sont mis sur leur route et qui leur apportent tant 🙌🏻🤍.
je mettrais bien plus que cinq étoiles sur cinq si je le pouvais, sincèrement ✨

[DaNae · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 stars for me.

4 for the readers I will give it to, whom will love it.

This really should be the kind of story I would go gaga over. A story from the road with mismatched compadres coming together for a greater purpose, is very much in my wheelhouse. I'm can't quite put my finger on what it is about Gemeinhart's writing the grates against my ear. I am always impressed with his pacing, even if some of the plot turns are little too contrived, but it's great for holding the attention of young readers. His characters are fine, perhaps a little overly quirky in this book. I think what bugs me is he leaves nothing for the reader to figure out on their own. He is right there telling every feeling and thought and motivation. I'm afraid that his style suffers from comparison. Recently, I've spent time with Gary Schmidt and Kate DiCamillo, who are both so great at creating characters whom show their feeling without spelling them out.

[Katerina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Какое ревью; купите срочно вашим детям, и пачку салфеток впридачу.

[Kari Ann Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️❤️❤️
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
"There were big days and there were small days and there were bad days and there were good day and I suppose I could pick any of 'em for my "once upon a time." But if I'm gonna be truthful- and truthful is something I always aim to be - then really there is only one best place to start this story."
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
With those opening words I knew I was going to love this book. And oh how I loved this book. (And that cover- swoon!)
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My 12 yr old daughter received this book as a birthday present- but I’m the one who really received the gift. The writing made me feel like I was on the adventure with them. I had a seat on that bus alongside this cast of characters that left a lasting mark on my heart.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
There was a time or two when my eyes got a bit misty and I exhaled a big sigh. There was absolutely moments near the end when I cried big, fat, heavy tears. It was So.GOOD!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I recommend to kids and adults alike. It’s a story that will give you “all the feelings”

[Павел Смолоногин · Rating 5 out of 5]

У меня нет слов. Это было невероятное приключение. Хилари Мантел (вроде бы) говорила, что чтение позволяет посетить больше мест и прожить больше жизней. Со мной произошло нечто подобное.

«Надежда – все равно что окурки на парковках. Она есть всегда, если хорошенько поискать.»

Это детская книга, которая не держит подростков за дураков, не сюсюкается, не жеманничает и, что важно, не наваливает наивных сахарных соплей. Это мог бы быть «Маленький друг», если бы из неё вырезали наркотики, а в остальном настроение у книги примерно такое же. Большая авантюра, раскалённый асфальт и одна очень умная девочка, которой важно помнить.

В таких книгах важно, как обращаются с сердцем читателя. Его обязательно разобьют, но будет ли это точный удар молотком, или его просто швырнуть об стену, или надменно раздавят подошвой грязного ботинка? «Койот Санрайз» (как и «Маленький друг») поднимет сердечко читателя очень высоко и скинет в пропасть, чтобы перед столкновением захватило дух от свободного полёта.

Music: Logic1000 “Perfume”,

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can* · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a moving, full of heart, amazing story.
I didn't want it to end (so glad there's a companion novel 3/5/2024!), I wouldn't mind traveling with these two through many more books :).

There's laughter, tears, some heart pounding moments, hugs, cute animals, and some found family.. a perfect mix of ingredients in my opinion <3.

There was one part where I was throwing my hands up and saying "Really???" I thought it was unnecessary drama (along with some bits in the final chapters) but it didn't dampen my enjoyment.. just some eye rolls and side-eyes.

Two especially touching moments had me tearing up, and had me thinking about my own family.

Would highly recommend this.. these people will definitely stay with me.

I need a book fairy godmother to get me every version of these haha :).

Side note: one nail biting section was written so good, I felt like I was there and was holding on for dear life and fast breathing along with everyone else.

Well done author, well done 👏

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this middle grade book. It was quirky and full of heart - my favorite combo! Coyote Sunrise is a 12 year old girl living on a school bus with her father, Rodeo. They travel around the country following whatever whim hits them in the moment and running from the grief of a family tragedy. Along the way they pick up some strangers who become entwined in their story.

Themes of love, friendship, story, grief, kindness, honesty, and so many more are included here. It was fabulous.

[Muffinsandbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un énorme coup de coeur. Dès les premières pages, j'ai adoré l'histoire, le style et les personnages. Après seulement quelques chapitres, c'était évident que ça allait être un coup de coeur et ça n'a pas manqué. J'ai trouvé que c'était vraiment original, vraiment beau, émouvant, touchant, prenant ... bref, à mes yeux, c'est une pépite comme on en croise pas souvent ! ;)