Richard Peck

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

All through elementary school, Archer Magill has looked for role models and found three of them in his grandpa, dad, and uncle Paul, but now a fourth has joined their ranks--Mr. McLeod, who along with his army dog, Argus, becomes a bit of a celebrity. However, now middle school has started, and the changes are not for the better. Archer is then surprised by being named best man in two of his role models' wedding, which means he will have to figure...

In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dream of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew is disrupted when his older sister takes over as the teacher at his one-room schoolhouse after mean old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies." Russell and his friends are more determined than ever to close the school, even if it means stealing, setting the outhouse on fire, and bringing snakes to class.

During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.

Relates the surprising gifts bestowed on twelve-year-old Bob Barnhart and his family, who have recently moved to a small Illinois town in 1958, by their larger-than-life neighbor, Mrs. Dowdel.

In 1893, thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel from their Illinois farm to Chicago to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World's Columbian Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-changing experience for everyone.

A collection of short stories, including two previously unpublished ones, that deal with the way things could be.

Daytime at Grandma's house is fine, but bedtime is terrifying when a monster seems to be about.

When her drug-addict mother can no longer care for her, twelve-year-old Molly comes to stay with her great-aunt and slowly begins to realize that others in the small town also feel as if they don't belong.

"In 1973 celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again, Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed. Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before-published stories, essays,...