My Diary from the Edge of the World

Gracie Lockwood is twelve and lives in Cliffden, Maine, in a version of America where the Industrial Revolution only half happened: sasquatches hide in the woods, mermaids surface off the beaches, and dragons migrate between Britain and South America. Dark Clouds are ordinary there too, the way weather is ordinary, and everyone knows what it means when one settles over a house.

When a Dark Cloud arrives for her sickly younger brother Sam, Gracie's parents pack the family into a Winnebago and head for the Extraordinary World, a place at the ends of the earth that may not exist at all. Gracie records the whole journey in her diary: her irritating older sister Millie, her meteorologist father and musician mother, the orphaned boy and the guardian angel they pick up along the way, and the slow, unwelcome understanding of what the trip is really for.

Jodi Lynn Anderson's middle-grade fantasy was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015 and earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal. Told entirely in diary entries, it pairs a wide-open road-trip adventure with a quiet family story about loving somebody you may not get to keep.