Countdown (Sixties Trilogy #1)

Wiles heads north from her familiar Mississippi terrain ("Each Little Bird That Sings") for this documentary novel set in Maryland during the Cuban missile crisis. Eleven-year-old Franny, a middle child, is in the thick of ither father (like Wiless was) is a pilot stationed at Andrews Air Force Base. Wiles palpably recreates the fear kids felt when air-raid sirens and duck-and-cover drills were routine, and when watching President Kennedys televised speech announcing the presence of missiles in Cuba was an extra-credit assignment. Home life offers scant refuge. Frannys beloved older sister is keeping secrets and regularly disappearing; her mothers ordered household is upended by the increasingly erratic behavior of Uncle Otts (a WWI veteran); and Frannys relationship with her best friend Margie is on the brink as both vie for the same boys attention. Interwoven with Frannys first-person, present-tense narration are period photographs, newspaper clippings, excerpts from informational pamphlets (how to build a bomb shelter), advertisements, song lyrics, and short biographical vignettes written in past tense about important figures of the cold war/civil rights eraHarry S. Truman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Pete Seeger. The back-and-forth is occasionally dizzying, but the striking design and heavy emphasis on primary source material may draw in graphic novel fans. Culminating with Frannys revelation that Its not the calamity thats the hard part. Its figuring out how to love one another through it, this story is sure to strike a chord with those living through tough times today. Ages 9-12. "(May)"

Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly. Used with permission.

Gr 5–8—Franny lives with her family in suburban Maryland just outside Andrews Air Force Base, circa summer of 1962. Kennedy and Khrushchev's duel on the world stage plays in the background while the fifth grader worries about her best friend's betrayal; adores her college-age sister, Jo Ellen; and fights with her saintly little brother, Drew. When not navigating the ups and downs of early adolescence, she writes letters to Khrushchev, prepares for air-raid drills, and investigates her sister's coded letters from "Ebenezer." At its core, "Countdown"is a straightforward, no-surprises tale of historical fiction that at times reads like a memoir. Its unique format, however, is anything but run of the mill. Planned as the first in a trilogy, the book has been dubbed a "documentary novel." In a successful effort to give readers a sense of the country's total preoccupation with all things nuclear and Communist during the height of the Cold War, Franny's narrative is punctuated by newspaper clippings, advertisements for bomb-shelter materials, news broadcasts, brief vignettes about famous figures, ephemera, and more. The overall result is somewhat frenetic but certainly effective; readers are not only immersed in the era, but also experience a feeling of bombardment similar to that felt by Franny. While the narrative may not have stood solidly on its own, the documentary format and personalization of the major events of the decade will draw and dazzle readers.—"Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT" Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.