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Common Sense Note

Parents need to know that there is some violence here: a father is knocked out with a wrench, a girl's hand is caught in a rattrap, and an old lady likes to tell tales of gruesome injuries.

Families can talk about the differences between life then and now. What aspects of Davy's life sound similar to your own? Which are completely different? Does it sound like it was fun to grow up then? Is it more fun now? What else have you seen and read about WWII?

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Matt Berman

This slice of Americana, by turns funny and poignant, has all the elements that Richard Peck does better than anyone else. Start with an historical setting that will open up a new world to its young readers, a world that is at once familiar and alien, told by someone who lived it, and remembers. Add intact families with strong, loving parents and wise, cantankerous elders. Combine the golden hues of nostalgia with an incisive wit and humor that doesn't rely on pandering. Then spread it all out on the pages in some of the sharpest prose available in print today.

This is Mark Twain crossed with Dylan Thomas, and Peck is one of the very few authors who could bear that comparison. This delightful little book is not for kids who need lots of action and adventure to keep them reading. But for those who can enjoy a warm and witty portrait of a time and place long gone but not yet forgotten, it's a true gem. And it might just send young readers scurrying for their own grandparents to hear more stories about their childhoods, before every part of life was saturated with the media and computers, and when heroes appeared in your living room, but not on a screen.

From The Book

A Schwinn bicycle stood in the window. A solitary Schwinn, casual on its kickstand, sharp as a knife. Two-toned cream and crimson with a headlight like a tiny torpedo. An artificial squirrel tail dyed red, white, and blue hung off the back fender under the reflector. I couldn't look at the thing without tearing up. You could have played those chrome spokes like a harp. And look at the tread on those tires.

It was the last Schwinn in town, and maybe the whole country, for the duration. The duration was the new wartime word, and you heard it all day long, like the song "Remember Pearl Harbor," on the radio, over and over. The duration meant for however long the war would last.

Plot Summary:

Davy's life is pretty normal -- normal, that is, for small town middle America around 1940. There are the evening games of tag involving everyone on the street, Halloween tricks, eccentric neighbors, hopes for a new bike, times helping out at his dad's gas station, and tall tales told by the old lady down the block.

Then WWII intervenes, and Davy's older brother, Bill, joins the Air Force to be a bomber pilot. Now life includes air raid drills, scrap drives, ration cards, postcards from Bill overseas, and stars in the windows of servicemen's families. But even with all that, the war seems pretty far away -- until Bill's plane is shot down and he is missing in action.

Related Books:

Other Books by Richard Peck:
Bel-Air Bambi and the Mall Rats
Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death
Don't Look and It Won't Hurt
The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp
Dreamland Lake
Father Figure
The Ghost Belonged to Me
Ghosts I Have Been
The Last Safe Place on Earth
Lost in Cyberspace
Monster Night at Grandma's House
Remembering the Good Times
Representing Super Doll
Unfinished Portrait of Jessica
Voices After Midnight
Strays Like Us
A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories
Fair Weather
The River between Us
A Year Down Yonder
The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts
Here Lies the Librarian

Life on the Homefront:
Who Was that Masked Man, Anyway? by Avi
Other Bells for Us to Ring by Robert Cormier
My Wartime Summers by Jane Cutler
Stepping on the Cracks by Mary Downing Hahn
Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff

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