Search - A Long Way From Chicago

I think this book was written for young adults, but this old adult loved it!! Part of its charm is that the setting is life in the slow lane...simple people, simple living...no batteries required! While Grandma is gruff, she is wise and loving in her own way. This is just fun, easy reading without violence, cussing or sex!

Newberry honor book - really enjoyable.

ANNOTATION
A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice -- two city slickers from Chicago -- make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town? August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn't resting easy.
August 1930: The Cowgill boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back. August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma trespass, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry -- all in one day. And there's more, as Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma's -- each one funnier than the year before -- in self-contained chapters that readers can enjoy as short stories or take together for a rollicking good novel. In the tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannery O'Connor, popular author Richard Peck has created a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining.

This is one of my favorite books, it will make you laugh so hard you'll end up in tears.

My son(12) and I are reading it together. This book is on their summer reading list----we are enjoying it!!! Quite a lot of history runs throughout the book, I would rate this book very high for middle school students.

Both my son and daughter love stories about Gramma Dowdel. She is always unexpected, hiding a soft heart and a keen sense of what is the best thing to do under a gruff and forbidding exterior. The stories are warm and humorous and are accompanied by lots of laughter.

A Long Way From Chicago" is a hilarious book. While some (including me) may find this book an easy read, it is a fully enjoyable one! Each chapter of the book is a different summer visit to Grandma's Illinois town by Joey and Mary-Alice. Each of the seven summers gets more and more funny, and more and more outragous. I especially liked the fact that Grandma can make anyone, even the Sheriff, do what ever she likes. I also enjoyed all of the larger-than-life characters Peck creates. "A Long Way From Chicago" is definately a must read!