A Year Down Yonder (2001)

Winner of the 2001 Newbery Medal

Mary Alice's childhood summers in Grandma Dowdel's sleepy Illinois town were packed with enough drama to fill the double bill of any picture show. But now she's fifteen, and faces a whole long year with Grandma, a woman well known for shaking up her neighbors — and everyone else! All Mary Alice can know for certain is this: when trying to predict how life with a spicy Grandma might turn out? better not.

It was within the pages of Richard Peck's Newbery Honor-winning A Long Way from Chicago, which has already taken its place among the classics of children's literature, that Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel first made their captivating debut. Now they are back for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures in this wry, delightful sequel. Expect moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.