Hello guys and gals, I’m here again with another book talk and there is a book I have recently read. Published in 2004, Can’t Get There From Here is a Junior Library selection. The book offers a sensitive and realistic examination of an important social issue, the plight of homeless youth, and the ones about whom no one cares. In keeping with its true-to-life approach, the story is grim throughout, and although there is a small element of hope provided at the end, it is an optimism that is qualified. Youth homelessness remains a tragic and difficult societal reality, a problem to which there are no easy answers. The focus of this work is an “asphalt tribe” of homeless young people trying to survive the winter on the streets of New York City. Almost without exception, the “kids” have been driven to their situation by home lives so harrowing that anything seems better by comparison. Victims of lifelong abuse, their alienation is compounded by a fierce attitude of rebellion, and although it takes time for them to fully accept the hopelessness of their circumstances, the harsh reality is that their chances of survival are slim at best. The tribe members live hand-to-mouth, trying to make enough money to sustain themselves by washing windshields, providing improvised street entertainment, dealing drugs, and selling themselves as prostitutes. None of them have any sense of the future; for the most part, they cannot imagine living past the age of eighteen. Wowza, who doesn’t love a good train wreck?