A Year Down Yonder

by Richard Peck, and published by Dial Books for Young Readers

The book cover of "A Year Down Yonder" by Richard Peck features a steam engine coming toward us over low, rolling hills, going past a long low building on the right. There's a girl with a parasol standing on a hill, watching the train. The Newbery Award seal has been affixed above the train.

About

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This linked series of carefully crafted vignettes is set in rural Illinois during the Depression, when fifteen-year-old Mary Alice leaves Chicago to spend a year with Grandma Dowdel. Her initial apprehension at life in a small town with a scheming old woman gradually gives way to admiration and love as she recognizes the warm heart behind Grandma's shenanigans.



"Peck's characters are fully realized, from the quiet widow nursing her war-injured son, to Maxine Patch, running out of Grandma's house draped only in the biggest snake outside the Brookfield Zoo," said Caroline S. Parr, chair of the Newbery Award Selection Committee. "These stories will, like Maxine, streak 'straight into the annals of undying fame'"



A Year Down Yonder is a sequel to Peck's 1999 Newbery Honor book A Long Way From Chicago, also published by Dial.

Awards Won

Title Year
John Newbery Medal 2001 - Winner(s)