Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting

Andrew and his father live in an airport. Their days are spent blending in so that they don’t get caught and thrown out into the streets. Andrew’s father goes to work everyday and leaves Andrew in the care of the Medinas who are also living in the airport. The Medinas have a boy that Andrew plays with during the day. They help carry people’s bags and sometimes they get tipped for this service. Sometimes Andrew gets angry, sometimes he’s scared of what will happen next, but mostly he just really hopes that he and his father will have their own apartment again someday; then things can be the way they were before his mother died.

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting takes an issue like homelessness that is hard to understand and puts it in a child-friendly form. Andrew is a small boy who has a hardworking father but ends just don’t meet. There is hope though; there is hope that one day they will have enough money saved to get a home of their own again. Then there will be no more switching terminals to avoid looking familiar, no more carrying bags in exchange for change to keep in a tennis-shoe, and no more washing up in the bathroom at four o-clock in the morning. The book presents its young readers with things to think about and question. It invokes a sense of sympathy and hope as well. It takes a sensitive approach to educating students on the reality of something that they don’t encounter on a day-to-day basis.
Bunting , Eve. Fly Away Home. New York: Clarion Books, 1991.