The Exact Location of Home by Kate Messner

Nationally stats on homelessness are stark especially in cities like mine where increasingly there are less units that low income people can afford. In my library system we sometimes see families in transition who are temporarily displaced and are sleeping in their car in our parking lot. Some branches in my system have created packets for families, single moms and single men as each one of these groups has different needs.


Kate Messner is the author of novels such as Manhunt, The Seventh Wish and All the Answers. In her newest book, The Exact Location of Home, we meet Kirby "Zig"Zigonski who has settled into a routine that he loves. He mostly hangs out with Ruby and Gianna and he loves tinkering with simple circuits and electronics which he finds at yard sales and around the neighborhood.

His dad does't live with the family and his mom burns the candle at both ends trying to make ends meet while also finishing school. Zig is convinced that his mom is deliberately preventing him from seeing his dad (it's been more than a year since he's seen him) and when he finds some geocaches left by someone who seems to bear many similarities to his father he determines to follow the clues -even if he puts himself at risk. Zig's determination to find his dad increases when he and his mom have to leave their rental and wind up at a homeless shelter.  Zig learns some valuable life lessons in the process and is also able to teach what he learned to other-which is important.

These issue oriented novels are important for kids to read first because they may have a friend or classmate who has experienced homelessness or displacement and second because even if they haven't, reading books such as this helps create empathy in kids. Some read alikes to this book are Jewell Parker Rhodes' Towers Falling, Joan Bauer's Almost Home and Nicole Lea Helget's The End of the Wild.