William "Scoob" Lamar is on an adventure. He's with his G'Ma in a Winnebago....journeying through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Scoob doesn't know what the plan is or where he is headed. But he knows it is better than staying home and being in detension.

G'Ma reveals her treasure box. And in this treasure box, there is a Green Book. Yes, THE Green Book. The guide for where it was safe for people of color to visit and stay.

You see, his G'Ma is white....and was married to a black man.

Clean Getaway is a tremendous story for middle grade readers. It is a glimpse into systemic racism and Civil Rights history. Readers will get a taste of names and events like Emmett Till, Ruby Bridges, Meridian, MS......books like this are much needed right now. Especially for multiracial children. It's an #ownvoices story. After all, we do know that, unfortunately, shades of brownness do define a person's treatment. And we also know people look strangely at those when a white person is with someone of color. Will we ever change????

For a book that has comedic moments and a though provoking storyline, why did I only give it 3 stars? It was the ending. If you read other reviews here on Goodreads, people say the ending feels rushed. And they are right. For a book that started out as a travel tale, we drifted into a "jewel thief/falsely imprisoned" tale. I wasn't here for it.

I do still highly recommend it. I think it can be a conversation starter for families or a book club choice.......there are messages of family, race, acceptance, the past and the future.... ( )

Clean Getaway is about William, aka Scoob, who lives with his single dad, and has a great relationship with this Grandma. His dad is serious all the time, and seems to be disappointed with Scoob no matter what. His Grandma is always fun, so when Scoob is grounded and Grandma shows up to invite him for a spin in her brand new RV, Scoob hops in without asking any questions. What he thought was going to be the fun getaway he needed turned out to be a trip through family history that Scoob had no clue about. Scoob gets more and more worried the stranger his Grandma behaves. ( )

William (or Scoob, as his friends call him) is on dad-imposed house lockdown after getting into a scuffle at school, and he's chafing under the strict expectations his father has for him. So it seems like a dream come true when his G-ma shows up in a brand-new RV and tells him to grab his suitcase and hop in for an adventure, but the fun of a spontaneous trip that gets him away from his punishment quickly drains away when he realizes that not everything is okay with G-ma and he can't contact his dad because he left his phone at home.

This was more interesting than I honestly thought it would be. It's more than the sum of its road-trip/coming-of-age story parts, and I love that the characters (the adult ones in particular) are more complex and surprising than you might expect with a MG novel. ( )

From Nic Stone, the author of "Dear Martin", comes a new book chronicling a spring break adventure with a boy and his grandmother. William "Scoob" Lamar has recently gotten into trouble forcing his father to cancel their spring break adventure. However when his grandmother shows up in a RV, Scoob finds a way to bend the rules in order to get out of the house. His grandmother takes him on a trip following the Green Book (a historical travel guide for African-American travelers) and memories of a trip taken with Scoob's grandfather. Together they learn a lot about each other and realize that sometimes things are not always as they see. ( )

Somehow I got the impression that this was a fun romp of a book -- I would not say that I found it to be so. Great characters? Yes! Serious topics? Yes. Some twists and turns and unexpected revelations? Yes. In the end, though, it's a tragedy, and it left me sad. I found it tragic not just for the ending, but for the family secrets and their destructive power over the family relationships. It's well written, and well read. ( )