Countdown (Sixties Trilogy #1)

by Deborah Wiles (Author)

Countdown (Sixties Trilogy #1)
Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade
Series: Sixties Trilogy
Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall.

It's 1962, and it seems that the whole country is living in fear. When President Kennedy goes on television to say that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba, it only gets worse. Franny doesn't know how to deal with what's going on in the world -- no more than she knows how to deal with what's going on with her family and friends. But somehow she's got to make it through.

Featuring a captivating story interspersed with footage from 1962, award-winning author Deborah Wiles has created a documentary novel that will put you right alongside Franny as she navigates a dangerous time in both her history and our history.
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Publishers Weekly

Starred Review

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.

School Library Journal

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.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780545106061
Lexile Measure
800
Guided Reading Level
X
Publisher
Scholastic Press
Publication date
April 30, 2013
Series
Sixties Trilogy
BISAC categories
JUV013000 - Juvenile Fiction | Family | General
JUV016150 - Juvenile Fiction | Historical | United States - 20th Century
Library of Congress categories
History
United States
Historical fiction
Nineteen sixties
Girls
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
1961-1969
Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize
Winner 2011 - 2011
Texas Lone Star Reading List
Commended 2011 - 2011
Georgia Children's Book Award
Nominee 2012 - 2012
North Carolina Children's Book Award
Nominee 2012 - 2012
Volunteer State Book Awards
Nominee 2012 - 2013
Grand Canyon Reader Award
Nominee 2013 - 2013
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award
Nominee 2013 - 2013
Land of Enchantment Book Award
Nominee 2013 - 2014

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