A Year Down Yonder

Title: A Year Down Yonder
Author: Richard Peck
Publisher: Penguin Group
Copyright: Richard Peck, 2000
Pages: 130
Ages: 9-12
Genre: Fiction

Summary:
Just after the Great Depression Mary Alice is sent to live with her grandmother because her parents don’t have the money to care for her any longer. Mary Alice is dreading this, she knows her grandmother well enough to know that she is strange. Mary Alice brings her cat Bootsie with her and her radio. When her grandmother meets her at the train she takes her directly to the school. She is enrolled and told to watch out for the Burdick kids. Unfortunately she has to share books with her until she can get her own. Mildred Burdick tells her she owes her a dollar and follows her home from school. Grandma invites Mildred in but has her take off her boots, she even feeds her. But grandma is tricky, she takes Mildred’s boots and puts them around the horses neck, and then lets the horse go so that Mildred has to walk the 5 miles home.
Later, Mary Alice asks where Bootsie is and grandma tells her that she won’t have a cat in the house, but not to worry because she buttered her paws.
Halloween was fast approaching and it was a big deal. Because there was a school party coming up, Grandma decided to make Pecan and Pumkin pies. Mary Alice is distressed by Bootsie being abused, and when she tells her grandmother about it she finds her making glue. Which is used on the boys who come to tip over their privy. They use wire to trip the boys and then poor the glue over their heads. The boys ran scared and left their supplies behind, including a knife, a saw and a bag of flour.
The next day at school most of the boys were missing. But that night, Grandma has a plan. She tells Mary Alice to come with her and they go to an old mans house who said they could have the pecans on the ground. Not finding enough, grandma rams a tractor into the tree knocking more pecans down. Just enough for her pecan pies. They also picked up a pumpkin from someone’s house but Mary Alice sees this as stealing and doesn’t like it. But Grandma knows what she’s doing. The next morning they began on the pies and by nightfall they were complete. They took them to the party and they were a hit. Mary Alice sees the boy who got glue on his head and when she bobs for apples she kept them and took them home to bake.
They go to another event for Armistice Day and for some reason Mary Alice is given a gun to participate in the turkey shoot. She hands the gun to the next person in line and it’s the same boy who got glue on him, Augie. He takes aim but decides to go after a rabbit instead but misses and hits a new car. When it was time to serve the burgoo, grandma was cashier and got more than a dime off almost everyone. Mary Alice wants to know what grandma is going to do with all that money and it turns out she gives it to a less fortunate woman.
Christmas was coming up soon and Mary Alice and Carleen(the popular girl) were at odds. Mary Alice looked rundown while Carleen was always in nice clothes. But it is Mary Alice who is picked to be Mary in the school nativity. Mary Alice confides in her grandmother, but she soon changes the subject and they go out fox hunting.
When it is time for the play, grandma makes Mary Alice a halo out of baling wire and stars cut from tin cans. The production begins but goes wrong when Baby Jesus turns out to be a real baby! It turns out to be one of the Burdick babies. That made it one of the most memorable Christmas pageants in history, but not for Mary Alice. For her it was seeing her brother. Grandma had used the fox money to buy him a ticket! She also got a round trip ticket for Mary Alice to see her folks.
The DAR asks grandma to make the cherry tarts for their meeting and agrees to make them on her terms, she says that the meeting will take place at her house.
Valentines day arrives and Ina-Rae receives 4 valentines while Carleen only gets one. And three are from boys, or so everyone thinks. It turns out that Mary Alice made them to make Carleen angry, and boy did it work!
Mary Alice and grandma make the pastry tarts and prepare for the DAR meeting. It turns out that grandma had planned a reuniting of two sisters, much to the displeasure of one of them.
Spring came and for her birthday Mary Alice’s mother sent her a dollar. Bootsie began climbing up the house and sleeping in her room, grandma knew about it. Soon, Bootsie had kittens. A man comes along who grandma lets stay with them for a steep rent. That becomes the talk of the town for awhile but Mary Alice soon sets her cap on the new boy in school named Royce. Falling behind in math she asks for his help and he agrees. When Royce comes over, things go terribly wrong. A loud noise from upstairs occurs and grandma runs up the stairs in her night clothes with a gun. And down runs a naked woman, with a snake draped over her. Grandma scolds the man upstairs and Royce leaves. Mary Alice thinks he life is next to over. Rumors start to fly about kicking the man out of town and that he’d have to marry the naked woman. This reached grandma’s ears and she has Mary Alice invite her teacher over for dinner. Grandma is matchmaking.
Soon, school was out with summer approaching. And Royce graduates with four other girls. And as the end of the school year party approaches they are divided into committees. Mary Alice is finally one of them. But just as she’s starting to fit it, a tornado siren goes off, and instead of going to the school basement she runs home to grandma. She returns home to find that her grandma has rescued the cats. (Grandma lies and says she wouldn’t have bothered except she was already nearby.) After the tornado passes they go to help other people in town. The tornado turned out not to be too bad but they still had to clean up.
The graduation and school party happened soon after and everyone went but grandma. During the hayride, Royce and Mart Alice sit next to each other and he asks if he can write her while he’s at college. She agrees and he puts his arm around her.
Mary Alice decides that she wants to stay with her grandma instead of returning to Chicago but has to return. Years later, she is married at her grandma’s house. It was during the last year of the war and everything was rationed, but she married Royce and was happy.

Recommendations:
I would recommend this to girls more than I would to boys. It’s really a lovely story.
Potential Problems:
None.

My reaction:
I didn’t like it the first time I read it. But I read it again and really enjoyed it. The second time I was able to pay closer attention to the way Grandma acted. Almost everything she did, she did out of love.