Countdown

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but it was fantastic. Wile's story is strong and I enjoyed how she wove quotes/news reel clips/etc with the story. The terror that Franny, her friends and family, feel because of the Cuban missile crisis is both realistic and palpable. Emma Galvin gives Franny a voice that sticks with you and keeps you interested. I didn't feel like I was listening to Franny so much as living alongside her. The end of the book involves an incident with Franny and her former best friend and it's a terrifying accident, but it's written so wonderfully that you just can't stop listening. I don't know what the print version looks like, but I absolutely loved the audio book. It was a such a full experience that I show more can't wait for the next of this sixties series to be available. show less

“The secret to not being afraid is to understand what scares you”

This was a wonderful surprise of a book. I don't typically like Middle grade - it's just a little younger than I typically like to read - but this one was complete wonderful! I enjoyed this as an audio book - but I honestly think you need to do both audio and have the physical book. There are information tidbits at the beginning of every chapter almost that have information about culture and what was going on at the time of the book. It adds to much depth the story in the audio book because they are almost like commercials - with full voice change (both male and female) and sounds effects if it is talking about war and/or bomb shelters. It added such a depth to the show more story. BUT the inserts are full color and detail in the book and shouldn't be missed.

I also found it fascinating to see this time and this world through such young eyes. I know little of this time - it's my parents era and not mine (and even then, they were kids) - and it's easy to forget how scary the first bomb raid drill at school must have been. Her love for her grandpa but also her embarrassment and her struggles with her sister and her secrets (and her sister's need for rebellion) and her mother's tears and her father's fears and....all of it. Was so well done and easier to handle through a young girl's eyes. I loved her nightly letter in her mind of what she wanted to say.

But I find this topic and these stories particularly relevant today - as our children in the US are training monthly on full lock down drills for active school shooters and are learning first aid in school to possibly save themselves and others if injured. show less

Wow, what an experience this "documentary" novel is! The novel is broken up by photos, quotes, and essays from and about the 1960s. I thought it sounded kind of gimmicky, but it really brought the period alive in my imagination as I was reading. Well done, sirs and madams of Scholastic.

I'm giving this a full five stars for the combination of the originality of the design and the solid, compelling storytelling. The story is driven by Frannie's fear of nuclear annihilation combined with everyday growing up stuff. Frannie's older sister seems to have a secret life that Franny decides to investigate a la Nancy Drew. Franny's uncle suffers from PTSD and draws unwanted attention to her family. Franny has trouble with her best friend and show more crush on a boy at school. All the while the country is collectively holding its breath while JFK contemplates nuclear war.

I actually read another children's book recently that deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis ([b:This Means War|6659577|This Means War!|Ellen Wittlinger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275781716s/6659577.jpg|6854331] by Ellen Wittlinger), and this one was much, much better. My only criticism of Countdown is that the mechanics during the climax of the book didn't logically make sense to me. Franny gets caught up in a scary situation, and I didn't really understand how it happened. It didn't take away from the overall quality of the storytelling, though. show less

It’s 1962 Washington DC and 11-year-old Franny Chapman is troubled. At home, her Air Force-officer father is often absent and her mother is distracted. Her college-age sister is growing away, her younger brother shines as “Mr. Perfect,” and her WWI-veteran uncle’s behavior is growing embarrassingly erratic.

Things aren’t better at school, where Franny feels overlooked, her closest friendship is disintegrating, and she’s entering the new territory of a romantic crush. And in the larger world? Nuclear annihilation -- when, into the wounds of WWII and Korea and the all-consuming threat of Communism and nuclear war, comes the flash of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I love this book's “documentary novel” concept, which weaves show more Franny’s story with a scrapbook-like, history-rich assortment of news headlines, photos, song lyrics and pop culture of the time. But it's my caution, too -- that the novel's story is solidly aimed at tweens but the documentary aspect seems aimed at adults, especially the baby-boomer generation. To help kids understand it all, this is a great book for (grand)parents / (grand)kids to read together. Plus, an adult reading companion will be helpful if the characters' 1960s cold-war preparations (fallout shelters; "duck and cover") invite comparison to today’s terrorism threat.

Countdown is the first volume in what Wiles has planned as a “sixties trilogy” (subsequent novels to be set in 1966 and 1968), and indeed she plants the stirrings of Vietnam and civil rights in this volume. I’m looking forward to them.

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.) show less

The year is 1962. All Franny can think about is how her best friend is not really such a great friend anymore, and the cute boy who just moved in across the street. Until the Cold War escalates and she realizes that her cozy life may not be quite so cozy anymore. Any minute, the Soviet Union could drop a nuclear bomb on her hometown and literally end the world. So she practices duck and cover drills amidst an atmosphere of anxiety and fear.

True confession: I am totally caught up in the 60's trend that is going on right now. I watch Mad Men, wear pencil skirts, and just bought a mid-century modern coffee table. So I was very excited to read this book and was well-rewarded. This book has a great mix of history and fiction. Kids will show more totally relate to Franny's social problems--who hasn't had a friend go off the deep end? At the same time, they'll find out about one of the scariest and tense times in United States history that they may not be very familiar with. The author mixes transcripts of actual newsfootage, presidential speeches, and commercials, as well as songs, photographs, and movie stills with her story to really bring the time period to life. However, there are also funny and touching moments to lightened the oppressive aura of dread. Franny's family seems totally realistic, especially to middle schoolers, who will recognize how a family members can be completely annoying one minute and completely lovable the next.

Well-paced and fascinating, students will both root for and relate to Franny. The historical backdrop is on display through various historical artifacts sprinkled throughout the book. Reluctant readers will enjoy the story, while advanced readers can examine the historical perspectives. This is an engaging book that I can highly recommend to anyone. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Reading level: 5th--8th grade show less

A gripping Middle Grade novel which might also be educational - shh!

The first of Deborah Wiles's Sixties Trilogy, Countdown takes a fresh look at a coming-of-age story in the 1960s. Franny Chapman is a typical 12 year old girl, who reads Nancy Drew, has fights with her best friend, worries about how her hair looks, and has a crush on the boy down the street. We've all been there, and hundreds of books have been there as well. What Countdown does differently is it takes us back to the 1960s with a series of actual photos, news clippings, song lyrics, quotes, and ads from the 1960s, dispersed throughout the novel like a scrapbook. The real photographs bring an element to the novel which makes the era all that much more tangible for the show more reader.

While Franny Chapman was worrying about attending her first boy-girl party, she also worried about the frightening world in which she lived - the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK, fall out shelters, and practicing how to duck and cover under her desk at school. Being twelve was hard. Being twelve in 1962 was exponentially harder.

Wiles writes with seemingly effortless ease about a difficult time in our nation's history, while never talking down to her audience, and powerfully tapping into those difficult tween years.

There is one scene early in the novel where Franny goes outside on the playground at recess, and isn't sure what to do with herself, who to play with, and is full of that insecure, unsure nervousness we all felt at that age.

"...without a book I don't want to be alone at recess - it looks bad and people think there's something wrong with you.
Already there's a kickball game going on. Do I want to play kickball? No. I'm a terrible kicker. Do I want to play jacks with Carol and Marcy? No. They don't like me all that much. Do I want to jump rope? I'm a great jump-roper, and there's my best friend, Margie, in the jump rope line, waiting her turn. She's deep in conversation with Gale Hoffman, a girl who lives in the neighborhood behind ours and whose mother lets her wear lipstick already and do whatever she wants."

Takes you back, doesn't it? But then, a few lines later...

"But before Gale can smile, before anyone can answer the sky cracks wide open with an earsplitting, shrieking wail.
It's the air-raid siren, screaming its horrible scream in the playground, high over our heads on a thousand-foot telephone pole -- and we are outside. Outside. No desk, no turtle, no cover.
We are all about to die."

As an adult reading a children's books, I obviously got more of a jolt from seeing some of the photos from Life magazine than some tweens might, but the novel was not all nuclear missiles and the civil rights movement. Franny learns a few dance moves from her older sister, she eats TV dinners and talks about a brand-new restaurant called McDonald's.

When I first picked up Countdown, I wasn't sure what age group for which it was intended, and the publisher recommends ages 9 to 12, but I think that this book would reach older kids as well as some younger. It was wonderful and I highly recommend this book to be read WITH your children to make for a truly memorable experience. show less

I would tag this in both "Biography" and "Historical Fiction", because it is a "documentary novel," the term used by the author. So it technically fits both categories. First: it is a novel about an 11 year old girl living in tense times, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and her family--Air Force officer father, homemaker mother, older sister who mysteriously disappears for strange meetings at her college, adorkable young brother who worships atomic science and wants to be an astronaut, and her troubled Uncle Otts, who is suffering from PTSD from his ages-ago war service and comically calls everyone "Private!" or "Sergeant!" but also does scary things like try to dig a bomb shelter in the front yard.

Second: the book contains lots show more of awesome black and white photos of actual events of the time, quotations from current events, and brief biographies of contemporary historical figures (Truman, JFK, Pete Seeger, Fannie Lou Hamer) along with snippets of song lyrics, visuals of "Duck and Cover" drill advertisements, nuclear attack propaganda, etc. I loved this format, I found it quite fascinating and a great way to set the scene and time period for kid readers who don't necessarily know this background already and who might not be willing to put the book down and Google something unfamiliar they come across. (Unlike me, who was doing just that even with the visual aids! I love being able to call up on YouTube a song mentioned in the book and listen to it during the appropriate chapter. Boy did I do that a lot for the third book in the trilogy, but I'm getting ahead of myself here...)

So, a great novel and a good look back in time for young readers, explaining the Cold War and the political tensions that scared so many people, especially kids who didn't know exactly what was going on. Contains an excellent author's note about how semi-autobiographical it was, how she used names of some of her childhood friends and so on; and it has a great bibliography just like any well-researched nonfiction book, for further reading on the many subjects she touched upon in this book. show less