In 1914, Johnny Briggs’s father marches off to WWI with the promise that he will be home by Christmas. When his mother joins the war effort as a factory worker, Johnny is sent to live with his maiden aunt: a good woman, but practical and humorless. Johnny’s father, a toymaker, sends him frequent letters from the trenches, each accompanied by a hand-carved soldier to populate his toy army. But the letters and the wooden figures gradually alter . . . from humorous, to sad, to grotesque. Johnny fears that the small figures mirror his father’s own nightmarish transformation in the trenches and that his own innocent game of toy soldiers can have actual effects on events in France. Subplots involving Johnny’s vandalism of the rose garden of a respected teacher, and a deserter who is too ashamed to face his own father add further emotional weight and complexity to Johnny’s situation as the horrors of an adult world at war penetrate his childhood innocence. The well-realized English village setting during the fall and winter of 1912 is bleak, and the backyard in which Johnny ranges his toy soldiers is as muddy as the frontline. Johnny’s studies of the Iliad may be beyond some young readers. However, they will understand the stated parallels of a world in which war is a game for the gods (much as his game with his soldiers) and a world in which wars may pause but never stop (as in the well-documented 1914 Christmas truce). Thoroughness of research is indicated in a detailed author’s note. A minor false note is that Johnny, a bright 11-year-old, needs to have his father’s letters read to him, but that can be forgiven in an otherwise original piece of historical fiction in which big themes are hauntingly conveyed through gripping personal story and eerie symbolism. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-72924-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
Year-round fun.
Set in 1937 during the so-called “Roosevelt recession,” tight times compel Mary Alice, a Chicago girl, to move in with her grandmother, who lives in a tiny Illinois town so behind the times that it doesn’t “even have a picture show.”
This winning sequel takes place several years after A Long Way From Chicago (1998) leaves off, once again introducing the reader to Mary Alice, now 15, and her Grandma Dowdel, an indomitable, idiosyncratic woman who despite her hard-as-nails exterior is able to see her granddaughter with “eyes in the back of her heart.” Peck’s slice-of-life novel doesn’t have much in the way of a sustained plot; it could almost be a series of short stories strung together, but the narrative never flags, and the book, populated with distinctive, soulful characters who run the gamut from crazy to conventional, holds the reader’s interest throughout. And the vignettes, some involving a persnickety Grandma acting nasty while accomplishing a kindness, others in which she deflates an overblown ego or deals with a petty rivalry, are original and wildly funny. The arena may be a small hick town, but the battle for domination over that tiny turf is fierce, and Grandma Dowdel is a canny player for whom losing isn’t an option. The first-person narration is infused with rich, colorful language—“She was skinnier than a toothpick with termites”—and Mary Alice’s shrewd, prickly observations: “Anybody who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.”
Year-round fun. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2518-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Playing on his customary theme that children have more on the ball than adults give them credit for, Clements (Big Al and Shrimpy, p. 951, etc.) pairs a smart, unhappy, rich kid and a small-town teacher too quick to judge on appearances. Knowing that he’ll only be finishing up the term at the local public school near his new country home before hieing off to an exclusive academy, Mark makes no special effort to fit in, just sitting in class and staring moodily out the window. This rubs veteran science teacher Bill Maxwell the wrong way, big time, so that even after Mark realizes that he’s being a snot and tries to make amends, all he gets from Mr. Maxwell is the cold shoulder. Matters come to a head during a long-anticipated class camping trip; after Maxwell catches Mark with a forbidden knife (a camp mate’s, as it turns out) and lowers the boom, Mark storms off into the woods. Unaware that Mark is a well-prepared, enthusiastic (if inexperienced) hiker, Maxwell follows carelessly, sure that the “slacker” will be waiting for rescue around the next bend—and breaks his ankle running down a slope. Reconciliation ensues once he hobbles painfully into Mark’s neatly organized camp, and the two make their way back together. This might have some appeal to fans of Gary Paulsen’s or Will Hobbs’s more catastrophic survival tales, but because Clements pauses to explain—at length—everyone’s history, motives, feelings, and mindset, it reads more like a scenario (albeit an empowering one, at least for children) than a story. Worthy—but just as Maxwell underestimates his new student, so too does Clement underestimate his readers’ ability to figure out for themselves what’s going on in each character’s life and head. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-82596-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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