Peck, Richard

A Long Way From Chicago: A Novel in Stories

Each summer over the nine years of the Depression, Joey and his sister, Mary Alice-two city slickers from Chicago-make their annual summer visit to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town. Soon enough, they find that it's far from sleepy... and Grandma is far from your typical grandmother. From seeing their first corpse (and he isn't resting easy) to helping Grandma trespass, pinch property, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry-all in one day-Joey and Mary Alice have nine summers they'll never forget. Richard Peck's laugh-out-loud funny, episodic novel makes sure that you never will, either!



The 1999 Newbery Honor Book-"A small masterpiece of storytelling." -The Horn Book

Reviews for A Long Way from Chicago:

"Peck deftly captures the feel of the times...Remarkable and fine." -Kirkus Reviews, pointer review

"Warmly nostalogic, beautifully written, and full of thought-provoking interpersonal relatinships." -Children's Literature

"A rollicking celebration...Perfect for reading aloud and a great choice for family sharing." -School Library Journal, starred review

Awards for A Long Way from Chicago:

( The 1999 Newbery Honor Book
( A 1998 National Book Award Finalist
( An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
( A Riverbank Review 1999 Book of Distinction

Something for Joey (Bantam Starfire Books)

Together, they won college football's highest award.



This is a true, memorable, compassionate story of courage and love between two brothers. In 1973, while John Cappelletti was winning the Heisman Trophy as the outstanding college football player in America, his younger brother Joey was suffering from leukemia. But John, now a running back for the Los Angeles Rams, had a very special medicine for Joey. It was called touchdowns. And John scored them in bunches because they were "Something for Joey." The story of the Cappelletti family is a story of courage you will never forget.

Dreamland Lake

Flip and Brian have been best friends since grade school. But everything changes during the spring of seventh grade. That's when they find a man lying dead in the leaves near Dreamland Lake. What happens in the summer that follows will change the course of their friendship--and their lives--forever.

"A finely tuned shocker."--Kirkus Reviews

Amanda/Miranda

"Your future lies beyond a mountain of ice, where you will die, and live again." The wisewoman's prophecy disturbs Miranda, a maidservant who bears an uncanny resemblance to her rich and arrogant mistress, Amanda Whitwell. Thrust into a tangled web of lies by Amanda, Miranda watches helplessly as one fateful night, a prophecy once foretold becomes reality . . . aboard the Titanic. Richard Peck's newly abridged edition of his popular adult novel is an enthralling adventure that will capture the reader's imagination.

"A sure winner . . . A charming novel, full of mistaken identity, thwarted love and sweet revenge."
-Booklist

"The kind of page turner that has rainy days and summer reading written all over it."
-The Horn Book

Are You in the House Alone?

Remembering the Good Times

How well do we know our best  friends?



They were the best of friends.  Sixteen-year-old Buck Mendenhall first met Kate Lucas the  summer before seventh grade. In eighth grade they made  friends with the brilliant and wealthy newcomer,  Trav Kirby.



They didn't seem to  need anyone else. Mostly they looked forward to the  good times shared at Kate's house. it didn't  matter if their classmates wondered about them; no one  could unravel their binding  ties.



At least that's what they thought. When one of  the trio finds the future too great a threat, the  other two can only wonder: "How well did we  know our best friend?"



  "With humanity, wit, and a quiet intensity, Peck's novel   depicts suicide as a turning point inward of the pressures in  an alienated and violent society." -- Booklist, starred review.

  A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

Strays Like Us

Molly Moberly knows she doesn't belong in this small Missouri town with her great-aunt Fay. It's just a temporary arrangement--until her mother gets out of the hospital. But then Molly meets Will, a fellow stray, and begins to realize she's not the only one on the outside. In fact, it seems like the town's full of strays--only some end up where they belong sooner than others. Richard Peck has created a rich, compassionate story that will go straight to the heart of every kid who's ever felt like an outsider.

"This sensitive heroine is one readers will want to take under their wing." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Peck is at his best." --Booklist, starred review

( An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
( A Child Study Children's Book Committee Best Children's Book of the Year
( A Parents Magazine Best Children's Book of the Year

Fair Weather

Granddad emits a strangled sound, 13-year-old Rosie pitches right off her chair, and young Buster just vibrates. What event catapults the Beckett family into such a state? The arrival of a letter from distant Chicago--and not just a letter, an invitation from Mama's elusive, wealthy sister Aunt Euterpe. She decides that it's high time for the children to see the world beyond "the four walls of a one-room country schoolhouse." And what better opportunity than the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, to honor the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America? Spanish nobility, President Cleveland, and Ferris wheels, oh my! Richard Peck, Newbery Medal-winning author of A Year Down Yonder, paints a charming portrait of a 19th-century farming family turned upside down by a visit to the big city. Narrator Rosie is friendly and funny as she describes the instant (if not entirely successful) citification of her family, encounters with Buffalo Bill himself, and her own delightfully eccentric Granddad who named his horse after Lillian Russell (which is just fine until they meet her at the fair). This wonderful, witty glimpse into 19th-century America--sprinkled with historical photographs--concludes with an insightful essay on the Exposition. Heartily recommended. (Ages 10 and older) --Karin Snelson

Thirteen-year-old Rosie Beckett has never strayed further from her family's farm than a horse can pull a cart. Then a letter from her Aunt Euterpe arrives, and everything changes. It's 1893, the year of the World's Columbian Exposition-the "wonder of the age"-a.k.a. the Chicago World's Fair. Aunt Euterpe is inviting the Becketts to come for a visit and go to the fair! Award-winning author Richard Peck's fresh, realistic, and fun-filled writing truly brings the World's Fair-and Rosie and her family-to life.

A Year Down Yonder

Grandma Dowdel's back! She's just as feisty and terrifying and goodhearted as she was in Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago, and every bit as funny. In the first book, a Newbery Honor winner, Grandma's rampages were seen through the eyes of her grandson Joey, who, with his sister, Mary Alice, was sent down from Chicago for a week every summer to visit. But now it's 1937 and Joey has gone off to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, while 15-year-old Mary Alice has to go stay with Grandma alone--for a whole year, maybe longer. From the very first moment when she arrives at the depot clutching her Philco portable radio and her cat, Bootsie, Mary Alice knows it won't be easy. And it's not. She has to sleep alone in the attic, attend a hick town school where in spite of her worn-out coat she's "the rich girl from Chicago," and be an accomplice in Grandma's outrageous schemes to run the town her own way--and do good while nobody's looking. But being Grandma's sidekick is always interesting, and by the end of the year, Mary Alice has grown to see the formidable love in the heart of her formidable Grandma.

Peck is at his best with these hilarious stories that rest solidly within the American literary tradition of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. Teachers will cherish them as great read-alouds, and older teens will gain historical perspective from this lively picture of the depression years in small-town America. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell

Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel return for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when fifteen-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.

Wise, exuberant, and slyly heartwarming, Mary Alice's story is a fully satisfying companion to the celebrated A Long Way from Chicago.

The Teacher's Funeral : A Comedy in Three Parts

"If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has been nothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacher has passed on, they'll shut the school down entirely and leave him free to roam.
No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead of him, led by a teacher he never could have predicted--perhaps the only teacher equipped to control the likes of him: his sister Tansy. Despite stolen supplies, a privy fire, and more than any classroom's share of snakes, Tansy will manage to keep that school alive and maybe, just maybe, set her brother on a new, wiser course.
As he did in A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder, Richard Peck creates a whole world of folksy, one-of-a-kind characters here--the enviable and the laughable, the adorably meek and the deliciously terrifying. There will be no forgetting Russell, Tansy, and all the rest who populate this hilarious, shrewd, and thoroughly enchanting novel.