Richard Peck

The River Between Us

Richard Peck

• 2004 Scott O'Dell winner
• 2003 LATimes–Young Adult finalist
• 2003 NBA–Youth finalist
• 2006 YRCA-Intermediate nominee
• Score: 26.54

The whole country is changing in 1861 - even the folks from a muddy little Illinois settlement on the banks of the Mississippi. Here, fifteen-year-old Tilly Pruitt frets over the fact that her brother is dreaming of being a soldier and that her sister is prone to supernatural visions.

A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories

Richard Peck

• 1999 Newbery honor
• 1998 NBA–Youth finalist
• 2001 YRCA-Junior nominee
• Score: 16.49

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…

A Year Down Yonder

Richard Peck

• 2001 Newbery winner
• Score: 10.51

It was within the pages of Richard Peck’s Newbery Honor-winning A Long Way from Chicago that Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel first made their captivating debut. Now they’re back for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when fifteen-year-old Mary Alice moves in with her spicy grandmother for the year. Expect moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.

Wise, exuberant, and slyly heartwarming, Mary Alice’s story is a fully satisfying companion to the celebrated…

Are You in the House Alone?

Richard Peck

• 1977 Edgar-Juvenile winner
• Score: 10.27

“Forget it,” Alison counseled. “It never happened.” But it was happening. The obscene notes. “Stop reading that garbage!” Alison shrieked and grabbed the neatly lettered page from Gail’s frozen hands. And whenever Gail was alone, the phone rang and went dead as soon as she answered it. As her world shaded into a nightmare, Gail, surrounded by friends, family, and teachers, found herself utterly alone.

Then one evening her nightmare became fact when she learned an even more tragic truth; in spite of violence and degradation, she was still alone, the victim of…

The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts

Richard Peck

• 2007 YRCA-Intermediate nominee
• Score: 4.57

“If your teacher has to die, August isn’t a bad time of year for it,” begins Richard Peck’s latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he’s raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has been nothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacher has passed on, they’ll shut the school down entirely and leave him free to roam.

No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead of him, led by a teacher he…

Fair Weather: A Novel

Richard Peck

• 2004 YRCA-Intermediate nominee
• Score: 4.54

Thirteen-year-old Rosie Beckett has never strayed further from her family’s farm than a horse can pull a cart. Then a letter from Aunt Euterpe arrives, and everything changes. It’s 1893, the year of the World’s Columbian Exposition—the “wonder of the age”—otherwise known as the Chicago World’s Fair. Tucked inside the pages of the letter are train tickets to Chicago, because Aunt Euterpe is inviting the Becketts to come for a visit and go to the fair! For Rosie, it’s a summer of marvels—a summer she’ll never forget.