A Long Way from Chicago (1998)

This had been on my "need to read one of these days" and I'm so glad I finally did. From the time that Joey is 9 and Mary Alice is 7, the two children spend a week each summer with their Grandma Dowdel, who is very different from any adult the two have ever met. Her combination of strong personality and-- yes, often underhandedness-- steamrolls any of the folks in her small town who get in her way. While this is disconcerting for her grandchildren at first, they grow to take her in stride and even enjoy the ways that she outwits townspeople who seem to deserve it. Short vignettes cover each summer from their first with her in 1929 to their last visit in 1935. As the narrator, an adult Joe looks back at his childhood, and his voice is frank and thoroughly engaging.
Humorous historical fiction.
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Hilarious young adult book--listened to the audio book on a trip when my son was probably eight or nine. He laughed almost non-stop.

9/2012: I still love this book, and Grandma Dowdel still puts me in mind of my own irascible grandmother who gets more legendary the longer she's been dead. I like the episodic form of this book, though I think the sequel is better.

2000ish: I adored this book. My own grandmother has much in common with Joey's, and Peck is a lovely wordsmith to boot. Fun, warm, sweet but never gooey. ( )

This is a great book, one of my favorite from the children's lit class. It's a series of stories about the adventures of a pair of Chicago children when they go to visit their Grandma Dowdel every summer from 1929-1935. Set in northern Illinois, I recognize so much of what happens during their visits. This is one I can't recommend enough. ( )

Ah, good old midwesterners.. I think we might "get" this book a bit better than other folks from around the world. Seeing as how we have lived thru bits and pieces of small town country life. My own grandparents lived thru the depression that these stories were set, and frankly they told very similar stories. If you loved Jean Shepard and his Christmas Story, read Peck's summers he spent with his grandmother. They'll remind you of a time gone by.

I finished this in an hr on the train. Great train reading. ( )