The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

"What I loved about Coyote Sunrise was, first of all, just her as a character. She’s so confident and outgoing and sassy and smart and she loves to read. If you think of Hermione in the Harry Potter books, she’s different to her, but she’s one of those characters that you want your kids, if they could, to be like. She knows who she is and she knows what she wants and she goes for it. I loved that. In the book, you learn as you go along that her mother and two sisters have died in a car accident. That’s not in the story, but happens before. Since then, her and her dad have been living on a big, bright, yellow school bus, just driving around the United States from one campground to another. The dad is running from facing his fears—he should have read When Sadness is at Your Door . “It’s important to know that even if you think you’ve found the right book, if you’re halfway through it, or even a quarter of the way through it, and it doesn’t resonate, it’s okay to put it down” So, they’re moving around and it’s beautiful, they’re having a great time, but she starts to realize that she’s losing the memory of who her mother and her sisters were, and she doesn’t want to. They learn that a special memory box that she planted with her mom and her sisters, a few days before they died, is in a playground that is going to get pulled down. She knows she can’t get her dad to go back to the home, but she doesn’t want the memory box to get lost. She wants to go back and get it. So she has to trick her dad into driving back. Along the way, they pick up extra passengers, who also have places that they need to get to—they’re a diverse set of characters with different cultural backgrounds, and all really unique. A girl joins them on the bus who says she’s been kicked out of her house because she’s gay. It’s such a small part of the book, but it’s impactful. It turns out that she is actually a minor and has run away because of her parents’ response. She wasn’t actually kicked out. So that creates an important piece of drama for the story arc. There’s never a dull moment. There’s adventure, there’s inclusivity and there’s so much storytelling. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that every single person has their own special story and their own special things going on. You can’t run away from those things, and the sooner that you face them head-on, the sooner things will improve and get better. I just loved Coyote’s determination and the adventure and the message of acceptance. There’s a scene where they’re in a campground and she makes a friend for, literally, a couple of hours. The girl’s mom is asking Coyote questions and divulges how her mom and her sisters have died and then she points to the bus. And the mom asks, ‘Is that your dad?’ Then, when Coyote asks the girl to come to her school bus to see her books (they both enjoy reading), the mom says no. I felt, in that moment, that it’s so easy to judge somebody that’s scruffier than you. But Rodeo, her dad, is living the life he needs to live in that moment. He’s a great guy and yet this mother judged him based on one look. I feel the younger you learn that message, not to pass judgment based on one glance or two sentences, the better things will be."