Runaway Teens

Street Prince is a tender portrait of a twelve-year-old boy, grappling with tragic losses and unforgiving poverty. After giving birth, his teenage mother abandoned him at the hospital, leaving a scribbled note: His name is Lamont, I am no fit mother. Keep my baby boy. Letty J. His maternal grandmother "Elma" raises him as her own child. Thought to be dead, her estranged daughter returns home with two other children. A disastrous homecoming party takes place. Lamont meets a new classmate, the prim and proper Esmaria. The children plan to sit together at church the next day.

This diary of a runaway girl and her search for a home celebrates hope, resilience, and happy endings as only Wendelin Van Draanen, the author of Flipped and other acclaimed novels, can. Holly has run away before, but this time she actually gets away—and what at first felt like an escape...