Running Away from Home Books (Fiction)

[Extollager]

I've just reread John Christopher's The White Mountains, and it struck me that it's like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in being a story about running away from home. What are some other good works of fiction about kids (it'll usually be boys, I expect) running away from home on purpose?

Could we perhaps keep the focus on that theme specifically, and write elsewhere about things like accidentally being separated from one's family and home, or being kidnapped, or having to leave home (like Watership Down), or joining a group of dwarves seeking stolen treasure, etc., and nonfiction narratives? No movies, perhaps?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

J.L. Carr, What Hetty Did. Not a boy, a high school girl. Has fight with her a-hole father after learning she was adopted, runs away to Birmingham to find her birth mother, gets job in boarding house with many interesting lodgers, etc etc.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Stewart a Foster We Used to be Kings

 

[hitmouse]

I've just reread John Christopher's The White Mountains, and it struck me that it's like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in being a story about running away from home. What are some other good works of fiction about kids (it'll usually be boys, I expect) running away from home on purpose?

Could we perhaps keep the focus on that theme specifically, and write elsewhere about things like accidentally being separated from one's family and home, or being kidnapped, or having to leave home (like Watership Down), or joining a group of dwarves seeking stolen treasure, etc., and nonfiction narratives? No movies, perhaps?

I take it you have read the whole Tripods trilogy.

 

[hitmouse]

Starman Jones Robert Heinlein
Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak

 

[Bick]

Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak

He doesn't go anywhere, he's having a wee dream

 

[Extollager]

I take it you have read the whole Tripods trilogy.

I believe so. I don't have as good documentary evidence for the second and third as I do for having read the first.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, all!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's a very, very common device in historical romance books to get the plot going. The heroine—sometimes a young woman, but sometimes a girl of seventeen or so (which I would consider still a child, I don't know whether you would) who is running away because she is about to be forced into a marriage she doesn't want (frequently to a debauched much older man, although sometimes to a more age appropriate man with a very frightening reputation), OR to escape sexual harassment by a loathsome guardian or his loathsome son. I suppose it's so common because a) it gets the girl away from home so she can have experiences she would otherwise never be allowed to have in the stifling confines of her home b) it's an idea instilled in generations of females by the fairy tales they read when they were younger.

 

[Stenevor]

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I suppose it would bore the majority of kids nowadays but I really enjoyed the book and film when I was young. Always fancied running away into the wilderness.

Junk (Smack in the USA) by Melvyn Burgess. Award winning young adult book, Got a lot of criticism when it first came out for being a how to guide for dropping out, anarchism, squatting and taking drugs. A bit unfair as while it does all sound quite exciting at first lives are ruined in the long run.

Junk

 

[Danny McG]

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
Jody takes off down the river after his Pa shoots at Flag

 

[Boaz]

Could we perhaps keep the focus on that theme specifically, and write elsewhere about things like accidentally being separated from one's family and home, or being kidnapped, or having to leave home (like Watership Down), or joining a group of dwarves seeking stolen treasure, etc., and nonfiction narratives? No movies, perhaps?

This reduces my post to almost nothing....

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Eliza runs away in order to keep her child from being sold.
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. Gilly attempts to run away from her foster home to her biological mother and then considers running away from her grandmother back to the foster home.
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Jody runs away from his mother.
The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams. The dogs flee from cruelty.

Edit: Of course dannymcg posted while I was wracking my brain and beat me to the punch regarding The Yearling.

 

[Bick]

Boone Caudill in The Big Sky, by A.B. Guthrie Jr