This was a clever book and fun to read aloud with my kids. I enjoyed the parallel stories---the one told in drawings and the other told in the text---moving closer to one another over the course of the novel. It was suspenseful but not overdone. 
 My biggest complaint was that the pictures of young Rose were sometimes funny. She looked great in close-up, but in pictures of her whole body, her face was too large in proportion to the rest of her and it sort of ruined the effect. This book leaves me wondering: Was it really that easy for kids to run away to New York in years past? It can't possibly be that easy today, can it? Someone would surely stop them, right? (And then probably arrest the kid's parents because it seems like people are all about arresting parents when their kids do things on their own. Not that I want my kids to run away to New York City, nor do I anticipate it; I'd just rather not be arrested for it.)