Book recommendation

Alabama Moon by Watt Key

I read this in an afternoon and loved it. It was also on a Mock-Newbery Award list I saw recently. I would probably put it in for the Prinze Award were it not for the protagonist's age. Think Holes, think Maniac Magee.

Here's a blurb from the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

"For as long as ten-year-old Moon can remember, he has lived out in the forest in a shelter with his father. They keep to themselves, their only contact with other human beings an occasional trip to the nearest general store. When Moon's father dies, Moon follows his father's last instructions: to travel to Alaska to find others like themselves. But Moon is soon caught and entangled in a world he doesn't know or understand, apparent property of the government he has been avoiding all his life. As the spirited and resourceful Moon encounters constables, jails, institutions, lawyers, true friends, and true enemies, he adapts his wilderness survival skills and learns to survive in the outside world, and even, perhaps, make his home there."

What I love about it, aside from the extraordinary plot, is the author's care for his character. Many books leave the main character out to dry to make a point about coping in the world, or some such. Without giving it away, the reader knows that Alabama will make it. You don't think that he will, you know it. There are some poignant moments and some truly slapstick moments. And someone will make a movie of it, and make a killing.

And for those of you thinking Edward Tulane... Moon knows what to do with rabbits.