Module 10: A Long Way From Chicago

Hello, I'm Richard Nimz, prospector of the written word and literary explorer extraordinaire.  I love this book.  It's a piece of historical fiction set in the Great Depression, but described within are the sort of events that could've happened ten minutes ago.  Best of all, I think it's one of the funniest things I've read all year.  This book is A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck, Newbery Honoree of 1999.

Citation: Peck, Richard (1998).  A Long Way From Chicago: a Novel in Stories.  New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.

Summary:  Joey and Mary Alice Dowdel are two children from Great Depression era Chicago.  One summer, they are sent to live with their grumpy grandmother in rural Illinois for a few weeks.  During that time, a homeless man dies and a reporter asking for details gets directed to Grandma Dowdel, who then spins a yarn that this man was a decorated war veteran, who lost his home after selling everything to help the poor.  During the wake that Grandma Dowdel sets up, the coffin and the man inside move and Grandma shoots it with her shotgun to supposedly prevent the dead man from rising again.  This book contains the stories of that summer and the seven equally impressive summers after, as told by the boy who learned to respect his sharp-tongued, guileful, and secretly caring grandmother.

Impressions: I loved this book.  Grandma Dowdel is easily one of the cleverest people I've ever seen in literature.  This grumpy but kindly old woman, who has the brains to do anything she sets her mind to, regardless of the toes she steps on, truly demonstrates the phrase "crazy like a fox".  These eight stories are really about her exploits, although the children don't get in the way at all, and in fact become two fantastic accessories to all kinds of acts, from stealing the sheriff's boat to feed the homeless to helping lovers elope by dressing up as 'the Phantom Breakman'.  As Publisher's Weekly put it: "Like Grandma Dowdel's prize-winning gooseberry pie, this satire on small-town etiquette is fresh, warm and anything but ordinary."  This is the perfect book to introduce people to short stories, to show what rural life was like in the years of the Great Depression, or to honor the Newbery honorees (this book lost the Newbery Medal to Louis Sachar's Holes).  Or just to recommend for the heck of it, that works too.

Auxiliary Sources:
Author unknown (31 Aug, 1998).  Children's Book Review: A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories by Richard Peck, Author Dial Books $16.99 (148p) ISBN 978-0-8037-2290-3.  Publishers Weekly, September 1998.  Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8037-2290-3