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Richard Peck Message Board 1/1/2012
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Peck has written!

Author Peck's Book Reviews

A Long Way From Chicago
Joey Dowdel and his sister Mary Alice are nitty-gritty Windy City kids---but they spend summers in a small town downstate with a grandmother who defies all conventional expectations of traditional grandmother-ing. Each chapter recounts the adventures of a different summer; this technique enables the reader to see Joey and Mary Alice grow up, while simultaneously chronicling the subtle historical changes that shape small-townlife over the course of 8 yea...
A Year Down Yonder
The year is 1937, and the Great Depression has hit the Dowdel family hard. 15-year-old Mary Alice is sent downstate to live with Grandma Dowdel while her ma and pa eke out a meager living in Chicago. Mary Alice is less than thrilled with the arrangement. Grandma's hickville farming community couldn't be more different from Chicago if it tried, and the grandmother Mary Alice remembers from childhood is a multi-chinned no-nonsense country gal. Having...
Secrets at Sea
A family of American mice sail across the ocean to England in order to start a new life for themselves, find new loves and conquer old fears. Helena, Louise and Beatrice are a trio of mice sisters living in the basement of the home of an American family called the Cranstons. They have a brother Lamont who also lives with him. The mice family is descended from the oldest mouse family in America and is very prominent, though they are without parents becaus...