Starred Review. Grade 6 Up–C'mon back to rural Indiana in 1904 and join 15-year-old Russell, whose summer ends with the unexpected death of old Miss Myrt Arbuckle. Russell and his younger brother are thrilled because just maybe the school board will decide to stop its foolishness and tear down the one-room schoolhouse. Surely it doesn't pay to hire a new teacher for the six students who attend. But to his utter horror, one is hired and it's none other than his extremely bossy older sister, even though she still has a year left of high school herself. Tansy takes to teaching with vigor and manages to circumvent all of the high jinx and calamities that threaten to undermine her authority, such as an accidental fire in the privy and a puff adder in her desk drawer. Peck expertly evokes humor and colloquial speech and mores with such sentences as "The water wasn't crotch-deep on a dwarf at that point," and "She had a snout on her long enough to drink water down a crawdad hole." Even readers who are blasé about current technological advances will be as excited as Russell is when he sees the steel Case Agitator threshing machine down from Wisconsin on its once-yearly exhibit, or the Overland Automobile Company's Bullet No. 2 racing car that can travel a mile in an unheard-of 43 seconds. Another gem from Peck–and a fabulous lead-in to titles such as Olive Burns's Cold Sassy Tree (Houghton, 1984).
作者简介：
RICHARD PECK, was described by The Washington Post as "America's best living author for young adults." He is the first children's writer ever to have been awarded a National Humanities Medal. The author of more than thirty books, he has also won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in young-adult literature, the Newbery Medal (for A Year Down Yonder), a Newbery Honor (for A Long Way from Chicago), and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, among countless other honors. He lives in New York City. |
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