The book was a great read, no argument there. But, 3/4' s of the book was rehashing over and over again the plight of the children, the dysfunctional mother, the alcoholic father, etc. We got it already. In the last few chapters, the children made it to New York, and life was great! All in two or three chapters! Wow. There was a lot of redundancy throughout the book, and I would have likes to have seen more about how the children overcame it earlier. All in all a great book, but could have wrapped up a lot sooner than it did.