The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers
Published 2008 · 32 pages · 8,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Children's Literature
How hard is The Way Back Home to read?
The Way Back Home scores 100 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 80 out of 100
- An 8,800-word-or-fewer picture book for young children uses simple everyday words, in the register of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret but simpler still. Its story of an airplane, the moon and a Martian relies on plain, concrete language.
- Sentence structure: 80 out of 100
- Picture-book text runs in short, direct sentences meant to be read aloud to children. Its structure sits well below even the plain declarative prose of 1984.
- Abstraction: 12 out of 100
- The story is concrete: a boy, an airplane, the moon, a stranded Martian. Its one abstract thread, loneliness and the need for help, comes through action, closer to Asterix the Gaul than to anything philosophical.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- At 32 pages, the book gives a few events and a single situation, with illustrations carrying much of the story. Its pace is lighter than Beach Read.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- The plot is told plainly: the boy finds the plane, flies to the moon, meets the Martian, and they work toward home. Young readers need little inference beyond reading the pictures, much like the visual storytelling of Asterix the Gaul.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The dark, lonely moon and the shared predicament of the boy and the Martian carry a gentle meaning about isolation and companionship. The symbolism stays light and signposted, well below The Great Gatsby.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Readers describe the book as imaginative and earnest, with no sign of a gap between what it says and what it means. Its voice is as sincere as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- The premise sets a clear goal, getting both the boy and the Martian home, and the story moves toward that resolution. Picture-book closure puts it near Beach Read in its settled ending.
- Structural complexity: 80 out of 100
- The book follows a linear quest: find the plane, fly to the moon, meet the Martian, head home. It belongs to a series but stands on a single simple line, like the linear structure of Beach Read.
How The Way Back Home is regarded
The Way Back Home holds a literary regard score of 27 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.