About This Book

Alexander's father has a new job a thousand miles away, and the whole family is moving. Except Alexander, who refuses to move. To prove his point, Alexander refuses to pack, while his parents and two brothers pack around him. His parents try to be sympathetic. His brothers make fun of him. While his family prepares for the big move, Alexander ponders everything he must leave behind, and in author Viorst's characteristic infectious, rhythmic prose, readers can't help but identify with Alexander's feelings: "I'll never have a best friend like Paul again. I'll never have a sitter like Rachel again. I'll never have my soccer team or my car pool again."

So Alexander considers how he might stay. Maybe he can live with his neighbors who have a dog. Or the neighbors who have six girls — after all, they've always wanted a boy. Maybe Alexander could live alone in a tree house, or even a tent. At last resigned to the fact that he must, despite his eternal protests, move, he prepares to leave. But slowly. He takes long, last looks at everything important to him: the Rooney's roof, Pearson's Drugstore, his school, the place where he won a sack race. And he says good-bye to all of his "special people": neighbors and friends, Rachel, who taught him to stand on his head. Finally, his parents help him to anticipate the future place, and how the things he will miss can be replaced, the place a thousand miles away from which Alexander is already vowing he will refuse to move.

Viorst again presents young readers with a humorous, sympathetic character in Alexander, whom they won't be able to resist identifying with. The book is important as well in how Viorst outlines a process by which these same readers can use to adapt to major, often difficult, upheavals in their young lives.