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Narrated by Staci Snell
Patricia Reilly GiffUnabridged — 3 hours, 20 minutes
Narrated by Staci Snell
Patricia Reilly GiffUnabridged — 3 hours, 20 minutes
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PW's starred review of Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff, a 1998 Newbery Honor book, said that the WWII homefront novel, about Lily's growing friendship with a Hungarian refugee, "has all the ingredients that best reward readers." Willow Run follows Lily's best friend, Meggie, when her family must move to Willow Run, Mich., to work in a factory and help the war effort. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Gr 4-7-Meggie Dillon, 11, candidly shares her perspective on the sacrifices and fears experienced on the homefront during World War II. The girl's family moves from Rockaway, NY, to Willow Run, MI, so that her father can work in a plant constructing B-24 bombers. Meggie is a likable, realistic, fleshed-out character, introduced in Lily's Crossing (Delacorte, 1997). In this current offering, she deals with moving away from all that is familiar to her to live in far less comfortable conditions. Her brother, Eddie, is in the army. Her grandfather is a German American, and when older boys paint a swastika on his window, she bravely tries to chase them away. Though she has found her grandpa annoying in many ways, once the Dillons move to Willow Run, Meggie misses him terribly and realizes that despite his many quirks, she loves him dearly. With the news that Eddie is missing after the invasion at Normandy, she springs into action to bolster her family's hope for his safe return. She and her friends become convinced that the ice-cream man must be a spy because he isn't fighting in the army. They use their suspicions to steal from him, an act that leaves Meggie feeling extremely guilty. Giff's engrossing, heartwarming story will help readers understand how personally war affects people.-Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
This is a rare, vivid glimpse of the wartime sacrifices of American families who stayed behind during WWII. Eleven-year-old Meggie Dillon's story begins in 1944 in Rockaway, N.Y., just as her family's moving to Michigan's Willow Run so her father can work in a B-24 bomber factory. Meggie imagines a great adventure, but without the accompanying trauma. For one thing, the family leaves her often-embarrassing German-born grandfather behind, and she feels guilty for being secretly glad. She misses her best friend Lily Mollahan of Lily's Crossing (1997), her new home is as ugly as a rabbit hutch and worst of all, she worries about her brother Eddie, off fighting in Europe. Giff expertly captures Meggie's genuinely childlike free associations, her dry sense of humor and her moral development, as Grandpa's words sink in: "You have to dig deep before you judge a person." Spam and spies, 1940s songs and Victrolas and a lively cast of characters make wartime America pop to life in this finely wrought story of cowardice, courage and digging deep. (Fiction. 9-12)
Tough and tender, this [book] is an excellent addition to World War II shelves.”—Booklist, starred
| BN ID: | 2940172191510 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2005 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,114,314 |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
Chapter One
The wheels made a horrible sound; no wonder. The wagon belonged to Joey Kind down the block, who
hadn't used it in years; the whole thing was a rusted mess. And the nerve of Joey to say, "You be careful,
Meggie Dillon. Don't ruin it."
Too bad, I wanted to tell him, keep your old wagon. But I had to borrow it. It was all for the war effort.
And right now rattling along in the center of the wagon was Big Bertha, Mom's iron statue that had a clock
in her stomach. She'd been rusting away in the attic forever, just like Joey's wagon.
Big Bertha was going to war. Mr. North at the junkyard would pay me a quarter and Bertha would be
melted down into bullets. Poor Bertha.
It was almost dark so I began to hurry. I chugged past Grandpa's house but I knew he wasn't there. He
was at my house waiting for Dad to get home from work. Dad had news, that was all Mom would tell us,
and we'd hear it over a late supper of salad greens and flounder in tomato sauce: greens we'd grown in
Grandpa's garden, and flounder Grandpa and I had caught this morning. Poor flounder. Poor me for
having to eat it with every single one of its skinny bones getting caught in my teeth.
Someone was moving along the side of Grandpa's house. My mouth went dry. Here we were in the middle
of a war. Suppose it was a spy?
As quietly as I could considering the squeak of the wheels, I shoved the wagon into a pile of bushes and
tiptoed up the driveway. I went slowly, ready to tear back to the street and across the lawn to one of
Grandpa's neighbors before the spy shot me.
A pair of shadows. I clapped my hand to my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound. Then I realized I knew
them both. One was Joey Kind's older brother, Mikey, and the other was a kid I had seen down at the
beach flexing his muscles as if he were Charles Atlas, the weight lifter. His name was Tommy or Donny or .
. . I wasn't sure, but I remembered my friend Lily Mollahan nudging me, asking, "Did you ever see such an
idiot in your life?"
He was not only an idiot, he was big. They were both big, sixteen or seventeen, and tough, and I
shivered thinking what would happen if they caught me following them.
But what were they doing? They had an open can of red paint and a couple of brushes, and they began
to dab something on Grandpa's kitchen window.
"Hey!" I yelled, without stopping to think.
They spun around. Mikey looked embarrassed, but the muscle guy kept going with the brush. It looked as
if he were painting a spider . . . but then I saw. He was painting a swastika, the Nazi sign, on the glass
pane.
"That's what we do to Nazis around here," he said.
"He's not a Nazi!" I could feel the anger in my chest, a pain so sharp it was almost hard to breathe. "He's
American," I managed.
"Sounds German to me." The muscle guy was grinning. And then he was imitating Grandpa, mixing up his
fs and his vs, sounding the way the Nazis did in the movies . . .
. . . sounding like Grandpa.
I had a quick picture of Grandpa in my mind, Grandpa sitting on a bench down at the canal, his head back,
that awful red hat on his head, his face sunburned, singing "Mairzy Doats" with a German accent.
"Get out of here, both of you!" I yelled, almost forgetting it would be dark in about two minutes and I was
alone with them back there.
"You're lucky," Muscle Man said. "If this were anywhere else but Rockaway, they'd probably put him in jail.
He's got to be a spy."
I picked up a stone, ready to throw it, but Mikey took a step toward me. "You know what, Meggie? I think
you want the Nazis to win the war. You and your Nazi grandfather."
My arm went down to my side. "That's not true. You know that's-"
"Anywhere else, something would happen to him. Worse than jail," Mikey said. "Worse than anything. And
to you, too."
Why was he saying this? Maybe because I'd told the lifeguard at the beach that he was out too far.
But maybe not. He'd always been mean.
Or maybe that was what people really thought, that Grandpa was a spy, that I . . .
Somewhere down the block I heard a door slam. The two of them slipped past me along the side of the
house. When they were halfway down the driveway I plunked the stone after them, hitting the pail of
paint.
"Crummy aim," Muscle Man said, and Mikey called, "Heil Hitler."
"Watch out, next time-" and then I broke off because it looked as if they were going to come back after
me.
I darted around back, but now I heard them marching up the street yelling, "Heil, heil," with that same
accent.
I went up to Grandpa's window and put my finger on the painted swastika. It was thick and still shiny
wet, and I could feel that my cheeks were wet, too.
Grandpa was the biggest pest in the whole world, calling me Margaret every two minutes instead of
Meggie, whispering during movies so I couldn't even hear what was going on, saying bah whenever he
didn't agree with me.
So why was I crying?
Excerpted from Willow Run by Patricia Reilly Giff Excerpted by permission.
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