Angry with her father, 16-year-old Pud decides to hitchhike home from boarding school with her dog Ruff instead of taking a plane [in Hitchhike]…. As a result of her frightening experience [with four teenage boys who pick her up], she has to rethink her values and her judgments. The messages about the caring side of parental discipline and about learning responsibility come through, and Holland avoids the familiar teen novel trap of damning the older generation, but the relentlessly topical story is didactic and heavy-handed.

Shirley Wilton, "'Hitchhike'," in School Library Journal (reprinted from the September, 1977 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker Co./A Xerox Corporation; copyright © 1977), Vol. 24, No. 1, September, 1977, p. 145.