The Runner by Cynthia Voigt

I thought Cynthia Voigt's other Tillerman books--The Homecoming and Dicey's Song and A Solitary Blue--were the most painful and joyful young adult literature I would ever read.  Guess I'm still reading.

major spoiler follows:
Suggestion: do as I did, wait a few months after you read Homecoming before you read this book.  Assuming your memory is as weak as mine, you'll be halfway through before you realize who the main character is.  And if your memory is really bad, you'll have forgotten how it's going to end.

I wonder if nowadays, when people can freely choose to have or not have a child, if there are fewer atrociously bad parents in the world?  Probably not.  Who really knows what they're getting into when they choose to have "a baby"?  We're going to have "a baby."  "Some kids."  "My daughter."  "My son."
In the phrases above, prospective parents should replace "have" with "make."  Replace "my" with "a."  And replace "we" with "I".

They should say: I'm going to make a unique individual with likes and dislikes and needs and demands that aren't the same as mine.  Someone who's just as likely to inherit my faults as my virtues, and sure to invent a few new faults all their own.  If I try to make them be like me, I'll fail, every time. 

I read science fiction--my daughter reads yaoi manga.  I love making things--my son loves playing video games.  I say potato--they say po-tah-to.

Babies are kittens, so adorable, so wondering, so curious...and so doomed to become cats.  Cats shred the furniture.  Cats kill small animals and eat them and come back in the house to puke on your carpet.  Cats wake you up in middle of the night, yowling to be fed.  They kill and fight and mate and make more cats.  Cats will be cats.

But I like cats. And sometimes, if you're patient, they'll sit on your lap and purr.