Dan Gemeinhart: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

This was another book club book for my neighborhood book club. It's our middle grade choice, and I found the title and summary for it really intriguing.

Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, live on a refitted school bus they've called Yager. They drive across the country in search of any adventure with the exception of Washington state. Washington is a "no-go." It was in Washington, five years earlier, that Coyote's two sisters and mother were killed in a car crash. In a weekly phone call with her grandma, Coyote finds out that the neighborhood park is about to be paved over. It was in that park, five years ago, that Coyote, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box, a time capsule that they promised they would dig up in ten years time. Can Coyote get Yager and Rodeo across the country without Rodeo knowing.

I really enjoyed this book. It was cute, emotional, and funny. I found Coyote to be a really fun main character. She was witty, well-read, and sarcastic. I very much enjoyed reading the story in Coyote's voice. I also loved Rodeo, Salvadore, and Lester who they pick up on the way. The supporting characters were all well-written and interesting, and I loved that Coyote got to add these people to her life.

The plot was fun and engaging. There's a little bit of a miscommunication trope in it, but honestly, that didn't really bother me. I felt that Gemeinhart did a really good job of explaining why the miscommunication was happening, and I felt like that took away from the tackiness found in other books with this trope. I felt like the author promised the miscommunication at the start, and you were just waiting for it to unravel. The payoff of it finally doing so at the end worked out, especially because then Rodeo attempts to sabotage the plan.

I loved a lot of the central messaging to this story. First, always treat the people around you with kindness. This is a big message we get from Rodeo and his character. The second big message is that grief is hard. We see this through Rodeo's no go list and how Coyote isn't able to even speak her real name, call Rodeo "Dad" or speak the names of her sisters. It was sad how much Rodeo put on Coyote to manage, and how she finally stood up for herself and what she needed.

In all, this was a really fun book. I rated it ⭐⭐⭐⭐