| Booktalk
#1
Mary Alice Dowdel must go live
with her grandmother because the depression has hit home. Her brother Joey
has always gone with her to visit but he’s off working in the West. She
must face Grandma Dowdel on her own. This is no small feat as Grandma Dowdel
is feared in the small town. Even her own mother whispers as she puts her
on the train “better you than me”. Grandma has a way of making everything
equal though and Mary Alice learns about life and being a woman from her.
This is truly a hilarious story especially when Mary Alice finally gets
the nerve to invite the boy of her dreams home to study and a naked woman
with a snake wrapped around her runs through the house with Grandma close
on her heals. You will laugh until your sides act watching Mary Alice and
Grandma come to understand one another. (Melissa Britton, sneakfr@bellsouth.net)
Booktalk #2
Mary Alice Dowdel and her brother
Joey have spent many summers with their Grandmother Dowdel in a little
hick town south of Chicago during the Great Depression. Now she is fifteen.
Joey is working out West and circumstances are forcing her to spend the
entire school year with her grandmother, a woman well known for her peculiar
dress and definite opinions -- a woman few in town would dare to cross.
This is a very funny book, from the first day of school when the class
bully follows Mary Alice home until the fine Sunday afternoon when she
invites the handsome new boy in class over for lemonade and they are interrupted
by a naked lady, a very large snake and Grandma armed with a rifle. You
will laugh out loud as you read this book and watch Mary Alice learn from
her grandmother how to outsmart her enemies and help those in need.
This book, which won the Newbery Medal, is the sequel to A Long Way from
Chicago. (Jeannie Bellavance
bellavance@erols.com
for Pennsylvania
Young Reader's Choice Awards)
Booktalk #3
It's a depression year, Mary
Alice's brother has grown up and left home, her parents have moved into
a tiny apartment in Chicago, and there is no room for her. So she is sent
to a little hick town in Illinois to stay for a year with her Grandma Dowdel
who is so outrageous and frightening that even her mother is afraid of
her. So, it turns out, is the whole town. It's a tough place to make friends,
but she does make at least one, and has a big crush on a boy and gets caught
up in her Grandmother's amazing schemes. For instance, on Halloween they
dump hot glue on some boys who come to turn over their outhouse! (Karen
Kargel, Colorado
Blue Spruce YA Book Award, 2003) |
