Starred Review Brit is a brand new driver when her parents send her to stay with grandmother Nannie while they're off on a cruise. She quickly learns she's going to have to put her driving to the test because Nannie and her college roommates, Florence and Aurelia, are determined to go to their sixty-fifth college reunion. Thus begins an on-the-road, buddy story that precisely captures the impatience d the warmth teenagers, as well as the fragility and stubborn audacity that comes with age. Bullied by Nannie, whose car keys have been taken from her, Brit finds herself driving through the greater Northeast to fulfill her grandmother's plans, which include hiding the trip from Brit's parents, finding Flo's house, and kidnapping Aurelia from the nursing home where her son, Aston, has stashed her. There are plenty of over-the-top moments, and Aston is a villain of the Snidely Whiplash variety. But Cooney masterfully combines nonstop, cleverly plotted action with heartfelt emotion; Brit realistically becomes frustrated with impediments that come with age, even as she valiantly protects her charges. Perhaps it takes an adult to empathize with the aging process, but Brit comes as close as possible to understanding, and she'll make teen readers realize that what really separates them from the elderly is the fact that they are experiencing doors opening, while older people are watching them close. For another on-the-road, cross-generational tale, suggest Joan Bauer's Rules of the Road (1998).

Days after getting her license, Brit is co-opted by her grandmother to chauffeur the eighty-six-year-old and her three classmates to their college reunion. Oh, and they have to kidnap one from a nursing home along the way. Hilarious driving scenes are mixed with poignant moments as the women recall their heyday. Cooney's strong female characters are inspiring.

Gr 8-10-Sixteen-year-old Brit is illegally driving her Nannie and two other elderly women over three states, trying to get them to their 65th college reunion. The women have shared their lives together and, now frail yet determined, they need Brit's help. Brit, meanwhile, is running on adrenaline. Driving atrociously at first, she is also falsifying where she and Nannie are to her parents, who are on a trip to Alaska. Her cell phone proves to be essential as she talks to Coop, the boy she has loved for ages but who has blatantly snubbed her, and who suddenly takes an interest in her cross-country caper involving a kidnapping of one of "the girls." The kidnap victim, Aurelia, has an evil son, Aston III, who is out to steal his mother's fortune, using any method to do so. The tension peaks when Brit meets Aston face to face. Starting out slowly, the book is both a last-hurrah adventure for the women and a beginning one for Brit, yet it is somewhat trite as all the pieces fit together and everything ends "happily ever after-."-Tracy Karbel, Glenside Public Library District, Glendale Heights, IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.