Charlie wishes his life could be as predictable and simple as chicken nuggets.
And it usually is. He has his clean room, his carefully organized sketchbooks and colored pencils, his safe and comfortable routines.
But his perfectly ordinary life has been unraveling ever since his war journalist father was injured in Afghanistan. Now his life consists of living with Gram, trips to the hospital, and wishing things were back to normal. When his father heads from California to Virginia for further medical treatment, Charlie reluctantly travels cross-country with his boy-crazy sister, unruly brothers, and a mysterious new family friend. Along the way he decides that if he can spot all the birds that he and his father had been hoping to see someday, then maybe, just maybe, everything might turn out okay. Debut author Sally J. Pla has written a middle grade novel that is equal parts madcap road trip, coming-of-age story for a boy who feels like he doesn’t quite understand the world, and an uplifting portrait of a family overcoming a crisis.