A Year Down Yonder Analysis

How would you feel if you were sent to a podunk town in the middle of nowhere against your will? Mary Alice Dowdel is a city girl, and she feels awfully sorry for herself when she arrives in Grandm...

A Year Down Yonder is told completely from Mary Alice Dowdel's perspective, which gives us an inside view into her feelings. So while she may look stoic on the outside when she's sent away from Chi...

A Year Down Yonder is a classic coming-of-age tale because it chronicles Mary Alice Dowdel's transition from childhood to young adulthood. When Mary Alice shows up at her Grandma Dowdel's house, sh...

Sure, A Year Down Yonder takes place in a challenging historical time and place, but Mary Alice tells her tales of poverty and wartime with optimism and warmth. She lingers over the little things t...

A Year Down Yonder is accessible and friendly, with some rustic country charm. Mary Alice describes the world around her in great detail, and gives us insight into how she feels about each small in...

There's no mystery here. The title of A Year Down Yonder is quite straightforward—it refers to the scope of the book. The bulk of the novel takes places during the year that Mary Alice Dowdel spe...

At the beginning of the book, it's clear as can be that Mary Alice is not excited about going to a small town and staying with her Grandma Dowdel for the year. So why does she go back to her grandm...

The language in A Year Down Yonder is charmingly simple, which makes it easy to get lost in the story since you don't have to strain over big words or flowery poetics. At the same time, there is so...

Goodbye, ChicagoThe book opens with our young heroine in quite a state—she's being sent to live with her grandmother in a podunk town, and she doesn't want to because she's a self-described city...

Richard Peck claims that he writes each of his books six times over because he never gets things right the first five times. That's a lot of drafts! (Source)Did you know that Richard Peck's first w...

As you might expect from a book with "yonder" in its title, there's not a lot of steam between the front and back covers of this one. Yes, there is a flirtation between Mary Alice and Royce, but th...

Romeo and Juliet (1.44) Edgar Rice Burroughs (5.86)Rider Haggard (5.86)The Great Depression (P.4)The Roosevelt Recession (P.5)Civilian Conservation Corps (P.7)World War I, a.k.a., "the Great War" (...