The year is 1938, 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 mother and father remain in Chicago. Her brother, Joey Dowdel, joins the army while Mary Alice is less than thrilled with the arrangement. Grandma's Hickory farming community could not be more different from Chicago if it tried, and the grandmother Mary Alice remembers from childhood is a no-nonsense country gal.
Having no choice in the matter, Mary Alice arrives by train in September with her beloved cat Bootsie and prized Philco radio. Day one in the new high school finds Mary Alice getting on the wrong side of the local bully, Mildred Burdick. Mildred brazenly follows Mary Alice home, demanding a dollar---but Grandma Dowdel turns the tables on the tyrant, slyly untying Mildred's stolen horse. Faced with a barefoot 5-mile-hike home, Mildred loses interest in making trouble for Mary Alice. October brings plenty of other trouble, however, when another teen hooligan - August Fluke Jr. - gets in the habit of knocking down privies for pre-Halloween amusement. With the help of a strategically strung wire and a pan of glue, Grandma Dowdel trips up Augie's trickery, with a hot coat of glue that sticks "till kingdom come." Luckily, Grandma's treats prove far sweeter than her tricks: at the party, Mrs. Dowdel dishes up home-baked pies made with "borrowed" pecans and pumpkins. Moonlit winter nights find Grandma and Mary Alice trapping foxes; with the extra money, Grandma buys Joey a train ticket and he arrives just in time for the Christmas pageant. But when Mildred Burdick's illegitimate baby turns up in the manger, Christmas is anything but a silent night.
A Year Down Yonder
In spring, Grandma takes in a New York artist, Arnold Green, as a boarder for a whopping $2.50 a day as Mary Alice invites Royce over for an ostensibly "study" focused-date. The snake Grandma keeps in the attic drops down on Maxine Patch, the postmistress, whom Green was painting naked, or nude, as he prefers, leaving Maxine shamed (as she ran through town au naturel) and Arnold in shock. Grandma moonlights as matchmaker, introducing Green to Mary Alice's English teacher, Miss Butler. Mary Alice survives her first tornado, and the school year wraps up with a hayride that finds Royce and Mary Alice promising to exchange letters. A year down yonder leaves Mary Alice with a more tenderhearted view of country life and Grandma Dowdel, and she hesitates to head back to Chicago. Wedding bells ring at the end of World War II, and Mary Alice returns to marry Royce McNabb in Grandma's front room.
According to Kirkus Reviews, "Peck's slice-of-life novel doesn't have much in the way of a sustained plot; it could almost be a series of short stories strung together, but the narrative never flags, and the book, populated with distinctive, soulful characters who run the gamut from crazy to conventional, holds the reader's interest throughout."[2] Jim Gladstone wrote in The New York Times, "I suspect that parents and grandparents will enjoy reading these conversationally cadenced stories aloud, savoring Peck's sweet (but never too sentimental) evocations of, say, Kate Smith, 'the Songbird of the South,' singing; Armistice Day celebrations; W.P.A. artists' post office projects; and the joys of eavesdropping on faraway places through a portable radio in the dark of night."[3] Kitty Flynn wrote in The Horn Book Magazine, "While the escapades are diverting, the seven stories, which span the school year, don't have the cumulative power of those in A Long Way from Chicago... Peck presents memorable characters in a satisfying sequel, and those looking to be entertained once again by Grandma Dowdel will enjoy their visit."[4] Jaquan Jarrett wrote in The Yellow Wolf Magazine, "A unique approach to children's literature... a modern day children's book that is based on a time period we all enjoy reading about, rather than submitting to modern-day approaches with sci-fi and dragons". 2016
A Year Down Yonder is the much awaited and much loved first book in the Grandma Dowdell series. This book tells the story of MaryAlice, age 15, who is not excitedabout spending a whole year living at her Grandma Dowdel's house, butbefore long she becomes a willing accomplice in her outrageousgrandma's schemes to run the town her own way, do good anonymously,help friends, and avenge enemies.
This linked series of carefully crafted vignettes is set in rural Illinois during the Depression, when fifteen-year-old Mary Alice leaves Chicago to spend a year with Grandma Dowdel. Her initial apprehension at life in a small town with a scheming old woman gradually gives way to admiration and love as she recognizes the warm heart behind Grandma's shenanigans. "Peck's characters are fully realized, from the quiet widow nursing her war-injured son, to Maxine Patch, running out of Grandma's house draped only in the biggest snake outside the Brookfield Zoo," said Caroline S. Parr, chair of the Newbery Award Selection Committee. "These stories will, like Maxine, streak 'straight into the annals of undying fame'"A Year Down Yonder is a sequel to Peck's 1999 Newbery Honor book A Long Way From Chicago, also published by Dial.
Then as the school year comes to a close, Mary Alice is at school one day and the tornado siren goes on. The other students rush to shelter, but Mary Alice runs all the way home because she wants to make sure that her grandmother is safe.
Graduation rolls around and Royce McNabb is going off to college at the University of Illinois, while Mary Alice still has another year of school to get through. At the all-school party, Royce asks Mary Alice if he can write to her when he's in college, and of course she says yes. (Swoon.)
Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel return for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when 15-year-old Mary Alice moves in with her spicy grandmother for the year. Her extended visit is filled with moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.
"With the same combination of wit, gentleness, and outrageous farce as Peck's Newbery Honor book, Long Way from Chicago, this sequel tells the story of Joey's younger sister, Mary Alice, 15, who spends the year of 1937 back with Grandma Dowdel in a small town in Illinois." (Booklist)
Jessie Bollier often played his fife to earn a few pennies down by the New Orleans docks. One afternoon a sailor asked him to pipe a tune, and that evening Jessie was kidnapped and dumped aboard The Moonlight, a slave ship, where a hateful duty awaited him. He was to play music so the slaves could "dance" to keep their muscles strong, their bodies profitable. Jessie was sickened by the thought of taking part in the business of trading rum and tobacco for blacks and then selling the ones who survived the frightful sea voyage from Africa.
A Year Down Yonder Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis tohelp you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:Plot SummaryChaptersCharactersObjects/PlacesThemesStyleQuotes This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz onA Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck.A Year Down Yonder is about a Chicago girl's year-long stay with her grandmother in a rural town during the height of the Great Depression. The town is full of eccentric personalities, not the least of which is the grandmother.
The narrator is fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, who is forced to live with her Grandma Dowdel in a small rural town in southern Illinois because her parents cannot afford to keep her. Mary Alice dreads being stuck in a hick town, and she is afraid of her imposing, stern grandmother.
Around Valentine's Day, Grandma hosts a Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) gathering at her home, and puts the haughty DAR leader, Mrs. Weidenbach, in her place by indirectly revealing that Weidenbach does not have the noble blood that she claims, but the blood of the local, looked-down-upon hooligans, the Burdick family. Meanwhile, Mary Alice develops feelings for a new boy at school, Royce McNabb.
The end of the school year comes, and Mary Alice has to return to Chicago, even though she does not want to leave. Royce and Mary Alice agree to be pen pals, and in a brief Epilogue, the two are married several years later.
Mary Alice's childhood summers in Grandma Dowdel's sleepy Illinois town were packed with enough drama to fill the double bill of any picture show. But now she is fifteen, and faces a whole long year with Grandma, a woman well known for shaking up her neighbors-and everyone else! All Mary Alice can know for certain is this: when trying to predict how life with Grandma might turn out . . . better not. This wry, delightful sequel to the Newbery Honor Book A Long Way from Chicago has already taken its place among the classics of children's literature. 2ff7e9595c
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