Keep Smiling Through

by Ann Rinaldi

Overview

For young Kay, growing up in middle class America during World War II is a confusing and sometimes painful experience. Her stepmother, Amazing Grace, is a selfish woman who takes her unhappiness out on those around her. And for a little girl so concerned with pleasing others and doing the honorable thing, life with Amazing Grace is nearly unbearable. But Kay is also a believer. She’s determined to “keep smiling through,” as the song says, knowing that one day she will do something extraordinary. “A bittersweet historical novel.”—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547351506
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/01/1996
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Lexile:	570L (what's this?)
File size:	462 KB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

ANN RINALDI is an award-winning author best known for bringing history vividly to life. A self-made writer and newspaper columnist for twenty-one years, Ms. Rinaldi attributes her interest in history to her son, who enlisted her to take part in historical reenactments up and down the East Coast. She lives with her husband in central New Jersey. 

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5-8Despite a lack of focus in plot and theme, this novel succeeds in providing a detailed picture of the World War II homefront in New Jersey in 1943. Ten-year-old Kay is an appealing heroine caught in an unloving home situation. Her stepmother, "Amazing Grace," exercises incredible abilities in the humiliation and cruelty departments, and her best friend is taken over by the golden girls at school when her brother dies in combat. The war is very distant and it hardly seems a crime when father won't let the older sisters buy bonds. Far worse is that he makes them quit school to work, and takes their pay checks and demands control of their lives in ways that girls of the `90s will find hard to accept. When Kay's grandfather, a German immigrant, is arrested and only Kay knows the identity of the traitor, personal bravery in support of the country becomes real. The death of her stepmother's baby that arrives prematurely and Kay's feeling of responsibility seem extraordinarily melodramatic, and are undercut by the sacrifice of her only doll for scrap rubber. It's the little details of rationing, the radio soap operas, and the ever-desirable "Mary Janes" instead of Buster Brown oxfords that make this story work.Carol A. Edwards, Minneapolis Public Library

School Library Journal

An author known for historical fiction set in America's distant past, Rinaldi creates an unusually vivid picture of the period she knew as a child, the home front during World War II. She recreates the period through details and themes in the child's world: the radio dramas and rationing at home, the cliques and air-raid drills at school, the suspicion of Americans who grew up in Germany, and the many sacrifices made for the war effort. The story unfolds with a sharp sense of loneliness and hardship, as 10-year-old narrator Kay tries to make sense of the world and the people around her. The more Kay begins to understand the people around her, the more complex and multifaceted the story becomes, and the more truthful. The climax comes when Kay finds the courage to tell a truth that her stepmother would rather not hear. But every ambiguity does not resolve into a simple, happy ending. Kay's father remains as detached and her stepmother as unsympathetic as ever; they just matter less as Kay becomes more her own person.

Carolyn Phelan

Wrapped in a WW II world of rationing and radio dramas, 10- year-old Kay learns that doing the right thing in life doesn't always mean a happy ending. Kay has become her pregnant, pampered stepmother's target for abuse: blamed for everything, slapped for minor infractions, forced to wear dresses made from feed sacks or festooned with ugly ruffles. Her stepmother's parents are kind to her, but Kay is horrified to overhear her German-born stepgrandfather discussing the old country with a local merchant, even taking a political pamphlet. After he and the merchant are assaulted by anti-German thugs, Kay tells what she heard to a reporter, making sure he knows that her grandpa was showing concern, not disloyalty. Her enraged stepmother straps her, later goes into premature labor, and gives birth to a daughter who dies in the hospital.

Writing about an era in which she lived (explained in an author's note), Rinaldi (The Secret of Sarah Revere, 1995, etc.) fills her story with lively period detail (from Mary Janes to Margaret O'Brien) and period attitudes, too (others know of Kay's suffering but don't try to help her). Though her characters tend to be types, or, in the evil stepmother's case, caricatures, Rinaldi allows Kay to salvage her self-respect with the information that the baby's death was the result of an equipment shortage—far from the front, she was a war casualty nonetheless. A bittersweet historical novel.

Kirkus Reviews

* "Rinaldi creates . . . [a] vivid picture of the period she saw as a child."—Booklist, starred review —

From the Publisher