The Totally Tubular Travels of Josie Baker is a road-trip adventure story following Josie’s journey from invisibility to assertiveness during a summer week in 1986. It won two awards in the 2024 PNWA Literary Contest: “First Place” for Middle Grade and “Best Overall Story.” It’s currently a finalist in the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) Gertrude Warner Awards for Middle Grade Fiction.
Soft-spoken Josie feels invisible, especially to her parents. Even though they promised—they promised!—that once she turned 12, she could come with them to Boston for her sister’s medical operation, instead they enroll her in summer camp with a bunch of kids she doesn’t know. On the way to camp, the bus accidentally leaves Josie behind at a desolate rest stop in the middle of Washington state. She decides to get herself home rather than alert her parents. Let them worry about her for a change. She quickly gets mixed up with Denise Ramos, a street-smart runaway searching for her estranged mother. Even though the girls can’t stand each other, they agree to travel together to their shared destination. Traveling home is fraught with danger. As they cross paths with an escaped murderer and outwit a devious couple, the girls are forced to depend on each other’s strengths. Josie relies on Denise to do most of the talking and decision-making, but when Denise’s life is in danger, Josie steps into the limelight and speaks up to rescue her friend and, ultimately, herself. She’s done being invisible.
Tomoe and the Secret Island, a middle-grade historical novel set in seventeenth-century Japan, won FIRST PLACE in the 2019 Ink & Insights Writing Contest, Apprentice Division. It was also named JUDGES’ FAVORITE in the category of Middle Grade Historical Fiction.
Tomoe /toe-MOE-eh/ Hasegawa is an eleven-year-old girl in seventeenth-century Japan who aspires to be courageous like the samurai. She feels most alive when swimming at the beach or playing outdoors with her friends Sakuma and Kino. After Christianity is banned and persecutions intensify, Tomoe’s Catholic community flees to a remote island. They are pursued by the regional deputy who wishes to protect the nation from the corruption of foreign ideas. Along the way, Tomoe’s many attempts at bravery backfire and place her loved ones in great peril. Once on Kuroshima Island, she grieves the death of her father and the betrayal of a close friend. She eventually befriends the island’s mysterious hermit who teaches her to spearfish and models a courage different from the show-no-mercy credo of the samurai. When Tomoe unexpectedly comes face-to-face with the regional deputy, she must choose which version of courage she will use to protect her people.
The following are the books I co-authored with my fellow travel writers at Beginning Press. My maiden name—Laura Kraemer—appears on each of the covers.
January 1997
