Quick Take
- Narration: Lorna Raver captures the gentle comedy of Eugenia’s bossy authority and Baby Lincoln’s timid resolve with warmth, her Eugenia is imperious without being unlikable.
- Themes: Finding your own voice, the complications of sibling love, unexpected connections with strangers
- Mood: Tender and quietly funny, with the gentle melancholy that DiCamillo brings to all her work in this world
- Verdict: A near-perfect short audiobook, DiCamillo at her most concise, with a character journey that earns genuine emotion in under an hour.
I came to Where Are You Going, Baby Lincoln? on a quiet weekday afternoon, the kind where you have an hour between commitments and don’t want to commit to anything too demanding. Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson world has always been my go-to for this kind of in-between time: the books are short, warm, funny, and quietly wise without ever feeling precious about it. This third entry in the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series is the one I come back to most often, and listening to it rather than reading it revealed something I’d missed, Lorna Raver’s narration adds a layer of comic timing to the Eugenia-Baby dynamic that the print version can only imply.
The setup is small and perfect: Baby Lincoln, who has spent her entire life responding to her domineering older sister Eugenia with “Yes, Sister,” has simply had enough. She decides to depart on what she calls a Necessary Journey, armed with nothing but the memory of a dream involving a train and shooting stars. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She just knows she needs to go somewhere that isn’t here, somewhere without Eugenia telling her what to take and where to stand.
DiCamillo’s Particular Skill With Small Rebellions
DiCamillo has written across a wide range, from the devastating melancholy of The Tiger Rising and Because of Winn-Dixie to the screwball comedy of the Mercy Watson pig adventures. The Tales from Deckawoo Drive series occupies a specific register: slightly melancholy, very funny, and structurally precise. Each book takes a supporting character from the Mercy Watson books and gives them a moment of genuine change. Baby Lincoln’s moment is the most quietly moving in the series.
The “Necessary Journey” framing is characteristically DiCamillo: she gives her characters language for their experiences that is slightly too formal for the situation, which is both funny and tender. Baby Lincoln doesn’t know what she’s looking for; she only knows the word for the looking. The journey itself, which takes her onto a bus, into unexpected conversations with strangers, and eventually to a train station, is structured as a series of small encounters that collectively give Baby something she can carry home.
The Eugenia Problem and How It Resolves
Reviewers consistently single out Eugenia Lincoln as one of DiCamillo’s great comic creations, a character who is overbearing in every possible direction, but whose love for Baby is unmistakable beneath the bossiness. One reviewer notes that Eugenia is their favorite character to read aloud, which says something about how the character is written: she is performed as much as read. Lorna Raver’s handling of Eugenia in the audiobook makes this explicit. Eugenia’s imperious authority, her absolute certainty that Baby is doing everything wrong, is delivered with a comic precision that keeps the character from tipping into simple villainy.
The resolution of the Eugenia-Baby relationship across this story is handled with DiCamillo’s characteristic honesty: people don’t fundamentally change in these books, but they sometimes see each other more clearly. The ending doesn’t redeem Eugenia or turn Baby into a bold adventurer. It does something smaller and more true than that.
The 58-Minute Runtime as a Design Choice
At 58 minutes, this is nearly the ideal audiobook length for its target audience, the six-to-ten range that DiCamillo’s prose most naturally serves. It’s long enough to develop genuine attachment to Baby Lincoln’s journey and short enough to complete in a single listening session. Raver’s pacing respects this: she doesn’t rush, but she doesn’t linger either. The stops on Baby’s journey, the bus, the various characters she meets, the train station, each get enough time to breathe without overstaying. The series structure benefits from audio familiarity with the Mercy Watson books, but this story works as a standalone for listeners new to DiCamillo’s world.
Who Should Listen, Who Should Skip
Ideal for ages six through ten, for families who appreciate gentle, emotionally honest children’s fiction, and for anyone who has a Mercy Watson fan wanting more of that world. Works well as a solo listen or as a family listen-together. Not suited for listeners wanting plot-heavy adventure, the story’s pleasures are quiet, character-centered, and cumulative. For the right audience, nearly nothing available at this length does more with less.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have read or listened to the Mercy Watson series before trying Where Are You Going, Baby Lincoln?
No, the story stands completely on its own. Baby Lincoln and Eugenia are supporting characters from the Mercy Watson books, but their situation is explained within this story. Existing fans of the Mercy Watson world will get extra pleasure from the setting, but newcomers can start here without confusion.
How does Lorna Raver differentiate between Eugenia’s imperious voice and Baby Lincoln’s quieter register?
Raver’s Eugenia is delivered with a perfectly calibrated comic authority, brisk, certain, slightly exasperated by everything. Baby Lincoln gets a softer, more tentative voice that makes her small act of departure feel genuinely brave. The contrast is one of the audiobook’s best features.
Is this story primarily funny or primarily emotional?
Both, and the balance is precise. The Eugenia-Baby dynamic is consistently funny, but Baby Lincoln’s Necessary Journey carries real emotional weight, the desire to find out who you are when someone stops telling you. DiCamillo earns the tender ending through the comedy, not in spite of it.
Where does Where Are You Going, Baby Lincoln? fit in the Tales from Deckawoo Drive reading order?
It’s the third book in the series. Each Tales from Deckawoo Drive title focuses on a different supporting character from the Mercy Watson books and can be read in any order. The first two books (Leroy Ninker and Francine Poulet) help establish the neighborhood world, which enriches the third.
