Read With Me Wednesday: A Year Down Yonder

I have been thinking all week, “What book should I feature on Wednesday?” and was truly stumped.  I’ve read a lot of good books over the last few weeks, but they all have been books from series’ that I’ve already featured.  And then it came to me.  I could not believe it, I had never featured my all time favorite – read it a thousand times, still makes me laugh out loud – book of all time! 

So on this lovely (but stormy, but perfect for ready) Wednesday I would like to invite you to pick up and read A Year Down Yonder.  I promise with all my heart you will love it.  Grandma Dowdle is unforgettable.  I will be shopping at the grocery store or sitting in church and I will do something or someone else will do something, and it will totally make me think of dear old Grandma Dowdle. 

Now if I am being completely honest here I must share that A Year Down Yonder, is actually a sequel book to A Long Way From Chicago, which is really a great book too.  But A Year Down Yonder, is my favorite, and you don’t have to read the first book for the second book to make sense.  They don’t necessarily build on each other, at least not as dramatically as Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. 

I sincerely hope you enjoy this quaint fun little book as much as I do! 

A Year Down Yonder
by Richard Peck
130 pages

 

In this hilarious and poignant sequel to A Long Way to Chicago, Peck once again shows that country life is anything but boring. Chicago-bred Mary Alice (who has previously weathered annual week-long visits with Grandma Dowdel) has been sentenced to a year-long stay in rural Illinois with her irrepressible, rough and gruff grandmother, while Joey heads west with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and her parents struggle to get back on their feet during the 1937 recession. Each season brings new adventures to 15-year-old Mary Alice as she becomes Grandma's partner in crime, helping to carry out madcap schemes to benefit friends and avenge enemies. Around Halloween, for example, the woman, armed with wire, a railroad spike and a bucket of glue, outsmarts a gang of pranksters bent on upturning her privy. Later on, she proves just as apt at squeezing change out of the pockets of skinflints, putting prim and proper DAR ladies in their place and arranging an unlikely match between a schoolmarm and a WPA artist of nude models. Between antic capers, Peck reveals a marshmallow heart inside Grandma's rock-hard exterior and adroitly exposes the mutual, unspoken affection she shares with her granddaughter. Like Mary Alice, audience members will breathe a sigh of regret when the eventful year "down yonder" draws to a close. Ages 10-up.  (Publisher Weekly)

 

Sorry if you got this post on Sunday night, I forgot to “Set Publish Date”!